I keep reading here and elsewhere, various plans and theories about how individuals intend to handle their portfolios and or things that they expect to play out, to tell them when and how to trade.

My warning is this. While we tend to use history and our past experiences to guide us (only natural and hopefully we learned from those experiences) don’t count on what is to come, to play out the way it has before. The circumstances in the economy, the markets, the political arena etc. are nothing like what we have experienced in the past.

The reasons things are different and results will be different, are too numerous to list, but I have addressed in previous posts, some of the specific, important ones that are driving and will continue to drive markets in the near future.

Suffice it to say, that things are not likely to play out the way they have before, in areas like miners vs metal, past ratios of this vs that, even many historical guidelines of when to trim or take profits etc.

I don’t have the answers to many of these questions but I suggest that whatever past rules and guidelines one has relied on previously, they are much less likely to be useful, and could actually be harmful, going forward. One needs to consider a different approach given the entirely different environment we are in. Everything, is likely to become much more challenging going forward.