How do you handle rough performance?

[hendi_alex]

Over the years one thing has become obvious to me. The market is nowhere nearly as efficient in pricing assets as the market makers and talking heads would have us believe. There is often mispricing. The question for me, is how to know whether the market is right or whether the market is just making a knee jerk herd movement to some irrational stimulus. I'm comfortable that many energy issues are in the deep value range but which are likely to drop even further during the fall shoulders months. I'm not so comfortable with REITs and that is reflected by my underweight at approximately 8%. I would consider 10% to be my average sentiment weighting and 20% my maximum fair weather weighting. I'm expecting a good bit more pain in the coming quarters, and won't likely move to exceed 10% weighting until then, probably also coming in the typical fall sell off that has come the past few years.

My worst performer is KED which is down -7,64%, but deep value range IMO, so is still in slow accumulation mode. My best performer is DLS at +8.49%. Both positions are were bought this year, but are planned as long term holdings. About half of the KED is for the shorter term. Overall, I'm still holding a 2.7% YTD gain, but that is about half the YTD high of +5.3%. It has been a difficult year so far, with very emotional swings. Hopefully we have yet another good close in November and December, so that the year finishes nicely in the green.

Though a dividend investor, I don't watch the dividend stream very much, as am much more interested in total return. When we get into a routine distribution mode, will likely calculate the closing NAV each year and take a 4%-5% distribution based upon that value. The dividend stream will likely provide that amount.