retirement interruptus: That Was The Week That Was- 2nd Week September

News Flash! There is Obama Care and there is Medicare, don’t confuse the two. If you are covered by Medicare you don’t have to do anything with the open enrollment period for the ‘Health Insurance Marketplace’, set up for the Affordable Care Act, that runs from Oct. 1st through March 31st. Anyone who is on Medicare still has a window of opportunity to review, modify and change coverage and benefits and that enrollment/modification period runs from October 15th through December 7th. Still there appears to be concerns with seniors that Medicare is a-changing. It is not. Rest assured and folks just should do what they do every year around this time- either shop for changes in coverage or do nothing. According to the WSJ on September 8th, if you are still working and enrolled in Medicare check with your HR department at work. Employers may have Medicare as a secondary health responsible position. In most cases your employer will have a primary healthcare coverage.

Larry Summers Withdraws His Name From Fed Chief Consideration. The surprising news broke Sunday and almost assured that the Fed Taper would be slow and gradual due to the two top contenders being architects of the current central bank’s programs along with The Ben Bernanke. Sunday night markets seemed assured that the Fed would continue its process of easy money, as reported in this weekend’s WSJ.

Sweet Smell Monday of $$s! Markets roared ahead, gold fell and talks of bombing Syria off the table- temporarily. DJIA up 141 points. After weeks of struggling the markets seem to have found their mojo in the midst of (1) Tapering talk and speculation (2) War drums (3) Emerging Market failures (4) No budget talks (5) Lousy payroll numbers. My world falls apart when the housekeeper doesn’t show, the toilet floods and the lawn guy chops off the rain sensor wire. Go figure…

No recession here… L.A. Little wrote, ‘Fear a squeeze and not a crash,’ in September 5th’s MarketWatch. com. ‘The probability is not on the downside.’

Robert C. Doll, Chief Equity Strategist, Nuveen Asset Management. In his newsletter Mr. Doll wrote, ‘ The equity markets remain in pause mode in the short term due to numerous uncertainties and subdued growth outlook. Over the next 6-12 months we believe global conditions favor equities over bonds and support a moderately pro-growth investment stance.’

Investment Banks Back. Reducing risk is the game today with Morgan Stanley saying their top priority was their client the United States government.

Caution is now the watchword at MS as they deal with new government regulations and a new stock valuation that is approx one-half of what it was in 2007.

The Biggest Shake-Up in the Dow since…? Tossed from the Index on the 20th of September will be Alcoa, Hewlett-Packard and Bank of America, not all top performers in the 30 stock index. HP has been up 50% this year, Alcoa down 7% and Bank of America closed $14.48 Tuesday, off from its $50 a share in 2007. So what’s new? Added will be Nike, Visa and Goldman Sachs. Remember the index is not static and constantly changes. GM, Kraft Citigroup, AT&T, Eastman Kodak have all been replaced on the Dow.

Jeff Gundlach, CEO at DoubleLine Capital shared a few bon mots with Ben Eisen at the close of business Tuesday. Here are the few…:

A 3.1% 10-Year won’t be good for stocks.
Short India- long Russia and China
REITs are attractive

Facebook…Remember scoffs, sneers and a supremely poor IPO messed up so bad that they’ll be teaching ‘How Not To’ in IPO classes for generations is now a ‘darling.’ Shares popped just on the mention of a trip to China by CFO Sheryl Sandberg to promote her (yeah) ‘book’. Over a billion folks on Facebook and the company is mobile mobile and rolling out ad programs to reach consumers on smart phones and tablets. Shares reached an all-time high Wednesday. Still there are detractors.

Rediscovered Fall Fav Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese Lunch… Yum!

Blackrock e-mailed a chart compiled by Morningstar last week that illustrates why buying different assets in an investment portfolio is sound practice for Investment Optimization.

Twitter Files for IPO- Used by more than 200 Million people. 7 Years old and created a global on-line communication culture. Not a big and lasting business model like Google or Facebook. No disclosures if the company is profitable, by how much and if it is growing. Stay tuned.