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July, 2026: 5 30

Disclaimer - IMPORTANT - Read this first!

Investor's Journal is a diary focused strictly on investments and personal finance issues, primarily from a contrarian and retiree point of view. Follow along with an average guy's failures and successes as he learns, by trial and error, the fine art of value investing.

Have recently been seeking an overall portfolio that is relatively low-risk yet offering good prospects for long-term growth. I do not expect these, an approximately equal, or 4%, amount invested in each of 25 assets, besides shares held in what I have called my Strictly No Sell 'ems, or SNSEs, holdings, those intended to be held "forever," to have as a group amazing total returns, yet, if they have as a group good prospects over the long-term to attain decent gains while suffering lower paper losses in market downturns than the S&P 500 Index.

The chosen 25 are as follows: ADBE, BDX, BINC, BRK/B, CI, DBMF, ELV, EWBC, FNDF, HFXI, KIM, LEA, MSFT, NEAR, PLD, SBAC, SPAB, SPGI, SWVXX, TPL, V, VGT, VMFXX, VXUS, ZION.

As new funds become available, they will be added to these 25 so as to maintain their roughly equal market value, taking into account as well that dividends are to be reinvested.

I encourage readers to do their own due diligence and to pick securities that make the most sense for them.

Recently I have been noting the current 200-day moving average for the S&P 500 Index as of the 28th of each month. As of 6/28/26, that index was again above its 200-day moving average, a bullish indication for the time being.

7/30/26- As of this date, my wife's and my total liquid assets (TLA) have a market value of $2,654,194, up $58,729 or 2.26% from their level as of the 7/5/26 entry. The current TLA level is $188,751 or 7.66% above that at the end of 2025.

As of 7/28/26, the S&P 500 Index was well above its 200-day moving average, so at this time we are proceeding on the assumption that the bullish trend of the past several weeks continues.

While the 200-day moving average suggests more bull market days ahead, the Buffett Indicator, derived by dividing the total market price of all U.S. stocks or stock funds by the gross domestic product, is at an all-time high of roughly 234%. This probably forecasts negative returns for most investments being made at this time and further suggests a large drawdown in equity prices in the not terribly distant future.

Even though my own current stance is one of dollar-cost-averaging buys of more equity shares, as there are funds to support periodic similar amount share purchases, a strategy that should result in more shares being bought when assets are down, less when they are up, i.e. lower average cost bases, a reasonable alternative approach would be to just keep extra funds at work in short-term bonds or bond funds for now, waiting for the substantial drop in equity prices that would seem to be inevitable in the next several weeks, months, or at most years. When the market has gotten ahead of itself in a major way before, drops in average equity prices of 50% or more have been common.

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