USA Today featured a piece Friday entitled, "Investing: Market Timing is for the Birds." John Waggoner writes, "If you're terrified of a stock downturn, your best bet is to reduce your stock holdings until you're no longer terrified. Your best bet now is a money market fund, despite the fact that the average money fund yields just 0.01%. After inflation and taxes, your returns will be smaller than a hummingbird's navel. But money funds are the one investment you can be fairly confident that will be more valuable in a year than they are now. With interest rates this low, it's a good bet that the Federal Reserve will start to push up rates in the next few months, and that means higher money market yields. It's a scary world. There's a war on. Europe is teetering on recession and deflation -- a period of falling prices like the Great Depression. Stocks aren't cheap. Interest rates could rise. But the world has always been scary. The stock market has survived world wars, a Great Depression, a Great Recession, oil embargoes and enormous one-day crashes. If you need your money soon, take some chips off the table so Mr. Market isn't deciding your fate. But if you're a long-term investor, worrying about the market is for the birds." In other news, Sibos, the giant global banking conference run by SWIFT, the European banking consortium, starts today at the Boston Convention Center and runs through Wednesday. (Some money fund companies will be exhibiting, though not many.)
