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Our Secret Weapon: What Goes Up When Nothing Else Will
By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
March 7, 2007
"I took Steve's advice and increased our cash position... last Monday I sold two riskier emerging market positions and immediately rolled into Steve's recommended Access Flex Bear High Yield Fund (AFBIX). Of course, last Tuesday, as Steve would say, things went to 'less perfect.' ... I can't thank you and your team enough for being really smart and helping us keep our portfolio on course... Great Job!" – True Wealth subscriber Ralph.
Last week, everything went down. But AFBIX went up.
In the February issue of True Wealth, I encouraged readers to buy shares of AFBIX. I called it a "direct bet on things simply going from perfect to less perfect."
Ralph took our advice... and his timing was perfect. But what's AFBIX?
Buying AFBIX, I told my subscribers, is "like we're buying hurricane insurance in a place that hasn't seen a big storm in years – but sits right in hurricane alley."
AFBIX is a special kind of fund that tracks the cost of insurance. Only it's not weather insurance – it's financial insurance. The kind large investors buy to protect themselves against a catastrophic hit to their portfolios.
Of course, the cost of insurance is the cheapest when you haven't seen a big storm in a while. And the world of finance was placid as a produce market in the second half of 2006.
As the stock market (the black line in the chart below) went higher and higher in late 2006, the cost of insurance against financial default (the blue line) went lower and lower (it's upside-down on the chart, so you can see how it's tracked the stock market).
AFBIX tracks that blue line. The cost of insurance, as you can see, got incredibly cheap in January. I posed the question to subscribers in my February issue, "How much lower can the price of insurance go?"
"Since nobody believes anything can go wrong, the price of insurance is incredibly cheap... It's not a question of whether a hurricane will hit. It is a question of how severe the damage will be this time around. We want to buy AFBIX low (now), and sell high (in the midst of the next recession). We will make good money – 20% to 50% depending on the severity of the recession – with very little risk.
"Even better, this fund can do well regardless of what happens in the stock market. With limited downside, and significant upside, AFBIX is a pitch to swing at."
Ralph's timing was perfect (better than mine, actually!). It turned out, the price of insurance wasn't going any lower... now that stocks are dropping and investors are scared to death, AFBIX is jumping up:
While this looks like a big move on the chart, percentage-wise, it's not that big at all. There's still plenty room to run. The cost of financial insurance can easily keep going up.
In short, when everyone gets scared and nothing else works, AFBIX will. Nice work, Ralph... and thanks for subscribing.
To learn more about AFBIX, visit www.accesshighyield.com – or better yet, become a subscriber to True Wealth and read all about it.
I pulled the chart of "financial insurance" from my friend Jason Goepfert's excellent website, www.sentimentrader.com. I've been a subscriber for years.
Editor's note: Steve Sjuggerud is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.
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