An excerpt from John Mauldin’s newsletter today:

Seriously, buy and hold in a secular bear market like we are in is a losing strategy. On an inflation-adjusted basis, you are down if your holding period has been 30 years! Most of us would think that 30 years is the long run! On a nominal basis, you are about where you were ten years ago, if you are in a broad index. Even if you are a value investor, you have gotten creamed in this market. (Some great value investors are down 60%. Their experience of buying and holding solid companies, which had worked so well for so long, needs to be married with some risk discipline.) You need a sell discipline. Barry’s [Ritholtz] system, or others like it, can at least get you thinking about selling rather than riding a stock all the way to the bottom and hoping it comes back. Hope is not a viable investment strategy. I don’t know much personally about trading. My stomach won’t allow me to trade, although I have watched and met with the best. But I do know this. The best traders and managers have risk controls and sell disciplines and they stick to them. Period. They don’t fall in love with a stock or a commodity position.

Background data (PDF) on trend following trader TransTrend.

The S&P 500 is down -8.57 percent this month adding to last year’s -38 percent plunge… There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like buy and hold, there’s no place like buy and hold…

From the AP:

The Justice Department says it foiled a plot by a fired Fannie Mae contract worker in Maryland to destroy all the data on the mortgage giant’s 4,000 computer servers nationwide…[the suspect] programmed a computer with a malicious code that was set to spread throughout the Fannie Mae network and destroy all data this Saturday.

The government, the same one that left Fannie Mae one mouse click away from implosion, is in charge of fixing everything? Of course they are!

I love this word “stimulus” - can mean anything! Martin Feldstein offers a view today in The Washington Post: “An $800 Billion Mistake“.

If any Wall Streeter received a bonus, while at the same time they or their firm were receiving tax dollars to stay afloat, that bonus money is due back. I agree with Obama here.

One of the interviewees in my film saw my comment above and emailed me tonight:

I am not 100% convinced, but for arguments sake, does that mean:

1.) Autoworkers should return wages paid since the time the Auto companies took tax dollars to stay afloat?
2.) Farmers should return all income during years in which any crops were subsidized?
3.) Federal employees, along with Congressmen and Senators, should return wages paid since the budget went into permanent deficit in 1970?

Hmm…you got me. They are all guilty!