What is a 13F Filling one might ask? Well simply put it's a bunch of papers large money managers across the country file with the government saying what individual stocks they have bought or sold during the recent quarter; the reason they do this is b/c they are so large in scope the government (the Securities and Exchange Commission specifically) want to somewhat monitor where the "big" money is flowing so these money managers don't manipulate the stock market. Every quarter these fillings are released by the government and it allows individuals and money management firms to see what stocks have been bought and sold in the past quarter (this sounds like a pretty cool way to determine which stocks to buy or sell but you have to remember it's also a rear-view filling b/c these are stocks that big money management firms have ALREADY bought or sold....that being said if you study the stocks you see in the fillings, and also know the way certain money managers pick stocks, it's a good place to mine for stock/investment ideas. Every quarter these fillings are released, I go thru them to see if any of these big firms own any of the stocks I may own or have been thinking about owning.
Here's a link to the most recent 13F filling which shows what some of the largest money management firms bought or sold in the most recent quarter; the stocks are shown by their ticker symbols (which is a bunch of random letters - to see which symbols are which companies you can google them or go to www.cnbc.com and type them in at the top). The reason I'm putting this on my blog is b/c part of what I'm trying to do with my website is educate individuals on how I and others who manage money research and come up with investment ideas.
Enjoy
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-15/complete-hedge-fund-q3-13f-holdings-and-position-changes-summary
Other than that, recent quarterly earnings out of Cisco (one of the largest technology companies in the world and Caterpillar which is one of the largest earth moving and machinery companies in the world have pointed to continued weakness in Developing/Emerging Markets. These countries, just to name a few, are: Brazil, Russia, India, Italy, China, Portugal, Ireland). So based on these recent earnings reports, I would expect to see further weakness in Latin America, Russia, and the Emerging Market mutual funds...might to be too early to move money into these international funds and for the time being I would stick with Western European focused funds.
