Right, however, I am happy to say the recession that has been so well advertised, talked about with so much verbiage for so long, is now over.  You cannot pick up a newspaper, a magazine, or turn on the television set that you do not hear some economist or market strategist who profoundly expresses how bad everything is going to be.  This includes our recently elected new president who continually says, "well it's bad, but it's going to get worse."  This is not true.  The way this market is behaving and the way the economy is behaving; the recession is over. 

Now let me give some reasons why it is over:  1) More money goes into 401K plans every payday; money managers are paid for performance, not to sit on cash.  2)  Equities are at valuations not seen in the past 60 years.  3)  Dividend income is worth more today than it has been in a long time because interest rates are so low, and the fear of inflation has been subdued; there is more fear regarding depression than there is inflation.

Having said the above, I am very much aware of the fact that thousands and thousands of accounts have been eviscerated by this decline, and therefore people who own those are much more interested in the near term rather than the intermediate or longer term.

To address this topic, I am going to quote from an article in the Wall Street Journal, written by Jason Zweig.  He is able to express my opinion so very well.much better than I could.  "At this moment, consulting Mr. Graham's wisdom is especially fitting. Sixty years ago, on May 25, 1949, the founder of financial analysis published his book, "The Intelligent Investor," in whose honor this column is named. And today the market seems to be in just the kind of mood that would have worried Mr. Graham: a jittery optimism, an insecure and almost desperate need to believe that the worst is over.

Stocks have suddenly become more expensive to accumulate. Since March, according to data from Robert Shiller of Yale, the price/earnings ratio of the S&P 500 index has jumped from 13.1 to 15.5. That's the sharpest, fastest rise in almost a quarter-century. (As Graham suggested, Prof. Shiller uses a 10-year average P/E ratio, adjusted for inflation.)

Over the course of 10 weeks, stocks have moved from the edge of the bargain bin to the full-price rack. So, unless you are retired and living off your investments, you shouldn't be celebrating, you should be worrying.

Mr. Graham worked diligently to resist being swept up in the mood swings of "Mr. Market" -- his metaphor for the collective mind of investors; euphoric when stocks go up and miserable when they go down.

In an autobiographical sketch, Mr. Graham wrote that he "embraced stoicism as a gospel sent to him from heaven." Among the main components of his "internal equipment," he also said, was a "certain aloofness" and "unruffled serenity."  Mr. Graham's last wife described him as "humane, but not human.""

This explains my concern over where the market is today.  Although I am very bullish on the intermediate to long-term, I feel we are skating on thin ice here.  We need and should have a rather lengthy correction.  However, I think there is a strong possibility we are not going to get it.  The reason being, it is a unanimous opinion at this point, everyone thinks the same way.  Normally when everyone thinks the same way it rarely happens.  Also one must consider that the price depth where some of these things went to on the downside was so extreme that coming back to where we are now is just normalcy, it is not particularly overdone.  Keeping this in mind, it appears there is a strong possibility, about an 80% possibility I would say, the market will move sideways for the next year to year and half.  Therefore it becomes extremely important and is a very good atmosphere to write calls and collect dividends because collecting dividends now, when inflation is low, becomes far more valuable than it does when inflation is high.  So with this in mind, I will continually make adjustments to portfolios in order to reflect those items that will give good option premiums and/or dividends or both.

I wish you a wonderful day, and in telling you everything is alright at this time, I am very pleased with the market, I am happy with where we are, and the changes that we will make will be done to improve the situation. 

Thank you for reading,

Jack