Inaugural edition of Dino’s Blog!

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Dino’s Blog! At Tellone Financial Services, we are happy to announce this blog as a new forum of communication to keep you updated on recent market trends, economic forecasts, stock tips, and most importantly, how all of this impacts you. Above all else, we hope to use this as a means to increase dialogue between the Tellone Financial family and yours.

First, I would like thank all of our clients for allowing us to help you achieve your financial goals. Thirty two years ago I knew that maximizing our clients return on investment and minimizing the taxes they pay excited my interest. To me it is not work, it is fun. That is why we enjoy continuing to be the best in providing you these services. My staff and I continue to find it personally rewarding to know that our work allows for people to retire securely, walk away from college without the burden of debt, or provide for future generations of loved ones. We want to continue to be your financial partner so you can do what you do best while knowing we are working hard so you don’t have to worry about your finances.

So what does the economic horizon look like? We are now updating our article on “What’s Hot” as the market hits its lows.

The Federal Reserve recently announced quarter-point interest rate cuts for both the federal funds rate and the discount rate, bringing them to 4.5% and 5%, respectively. These moves will allow both individuals and businesses to borrow more cheaply. More importantly, it shows that the Fed is committed to ensuring economic activity and doing its part to stave off recession. This decision comes at a time when oil prices are pushing new heights and the dollar is reaching all-time lows, which means a recession is still a definite possibility. In fact, most economists are forecasting a 50/50 chance of recession within the next 12 months. Nevertheless, consumer spending and exports showed surprising strength as the United States economy grew at a surprising rate of 3.9% in the third quarter, the fastest rate since the beginning of 2006.

We remain hopeful that the Fed’s rate cuts will be enough to deal with the weakening economy; however, the real estate downturn, the sub-prime mess, inflationary pressures in food and raw materials, a falling US dollar, and $94 plus crude oil are some of the reasons to be concerned.

Due to our exceptional early October investment returns, we had been taking profits from the highs and were cautious in our investment attitude until the markets became more fairly valued, thus saving our clients a great deal of money. Now, as we stated in our late November “What’s Hot” update, we are acquiring positions during market dips in sectors we feel will fair well, such as energy, materials, and technology.

We also expect to see persistent high levels of market volatility, which plays well into our intraday trading strategy where we trade the market ranges to generate profits. The last couple of months we used newly formed ETFs that take advantage of strongly performing indices to hedge our portfolios.

During this time of low interest rates and declining money market and CD yields, it is becoming evermore important to look for winners in the stock market. We are committed to maintaining excellent returns through superior investments. As always, we will continue to keep you updated on your performance through quarterly letters and reports, monthly fund reports, and of course, more blogs.

Our goal is to continue to increase your wealth. If you like to get email updates regularly, please email Derek Pantele at dpantele@tellone.com with the email address you want us to use and we will send you any updates immediately. Also, if you have a question or a specific area you would like to hear about, please email your request.