September was one heck of a month for the Markets. Some of that performance is reflected in the value of my IRA. That said given my current bearish stance, I was not positioned to take full advantage of the rally. Personally, I think the current market rally is rather dumb. The market has gone up because economic prognoiscators are pointing down. The market has been delighted by the rate cut, and is expecting and asking the Fed for more. As a fundamentally driven investor, I think future earnings are more important than any rate cute (though rate cuts can help earnings). That said because of the weakness in the dollar, U.S. companies are looking cheap.  The U.S. Market as measured in Euro is not actually up all that much for the year.

I engaged in two transactions in September since the last update. I sold my shares of PALM, and sold another 10 shares of FXI which is a China Index ETF.  FXI has been far my top performer by far, and everytime I think it can rise no further it ends up going up another 30%.  Such is life.  I’m going to sit on my 10 shares, and potentially add to it if and when the China bubble deflates a bit.  As a result of my sales, I’m also sitting on bit more cash than I would like.  I will be looking to deploy that in the next few months.  I’m looking at European funds.  If current trends continue the dollar probably still has more to fall.