Things I'm Seeing

The Chinese Stock Market looks extremely dangerous and I am currently avoiding investing in that region. While the U.S. markets are slightly positive year-to-date the volatility has been unlike what has been seen in decades. While some individual stocks are attractive based on value/price, the volatility in stocks is too much for most investors to stomach....case in point, a great small retail chain swung from a price of $7.45 down to $6.20 in a matter of a week on no news whatsover!! This kind of uncertain and random stock behavior is confusing and hard to manage. The best performing mutual funds so far this year (geographically) has been European funds. This morning I read this from the American Trucking Association: "American Trucking Associations' advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index fell 3% in April, following a revised gain of 0.4% during the previous month. In April, the index equaled 128.6 (2000=100), which was the lowest level since April 2014. The all-time high is 135.8, reached in January 2015. Compared with April 2014, the SA index increased just 1%, which was well below the 4.2% gain in March and the smallest year-over-year gain since February 2013. Year-to-date through April, compared with the same period last year, tonnage was up 3.8%. -- American Trucking Association, May 19, 2015 The Dow Jones Transportation Average's weakness is much broader than just in trucking, as all transportation segments -- especially airline stocks -- which have been schmeissed lately. Are there implications to this broad-based transportation weakness regarding the overall economy? One would think that with the low price of oil/gas that transportation stocks would be flying high but they're doing the exact opposite. My main concern is how markets are going to react to the eventual and inevitable rise in interest rates...which the US Federal Reserve and other monetary banks around the world will have to do. So, as of now I am still cautious on the markets and I'm sticking to owning premierly Mid and Large Cap Mutual Funds and a Select few European Mutual Funds...I'm still expecting (and think we need) a small selloff in the markets, around 2-5%, in order for the overall stock market rebound to continue (this sounds weird but stocks can't go up in a straight line, for when they do the end result is a massive selloff or crash).