What An Ugly Ugly Day

Not only are mondays usually rough b/c you're coming off a work-free weekend, but to wake up and see the stock market futures looking so absolutely ugly it's tough to stomache (futures are a preview of how stocks are going to open up trading). Here's a quick recap on what's been going on lately with the economy and U.S. corporate earnings: - Existing homesales last week rose to an 8 year high (which shows the housing market is looking good)..REITS (real estate investment trusts investments are good things to own at this time) - Consumer spending is increasing; look for retail spending in the home goods and discretionary (travel/accessory's/etc) to increase); Stein Mart/Pier One/Lowes/Home Depot/etc. Btw in full discretion I own Stein Mart and Pier One. - The Chinese stock market has been in a complete crash; the market will be down 8% one day and up 2% the next. - Tensions between North/South Korea and Israel/Iran are causing geopolitical concerns - Terrorism activity and rhetoric has been on the rise of late - The U.S. political landscape is a complete toss up. Although Trump is leading in the polls of late, there are a slew of contenders and no one is really standing out. The Democratic side of the street shows little direction as well. To put it as simply as I can, this is the Investment Mantra that I've been sticking with and will continue to stick with, ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION AND BE CONSERVATIVE. I've said this over and over for the past 3-5 months and which is one of the reasons we focused investments on select mutual funds and held larger than normal percentage amounts in cash (b/c we wanted to limit any possible downside in the markets, such as today). Over the past 3-5 months, including today, I've thought approximately somewhere between 20-40% of an account would be prudent to be sitting on the sidelines.... Nonetheless, today is ugly. Period. I'm about to post some of the reasons why today is happening and even what I'm looking to do over the coming days and weeks in leu of todays massive selloff in stocks...