Buy targets on SPYOne of the best ways to outperform the market is to buy the S&P 500 (SPY) or a leveraged S&P 500 index fund (UPRO) and simply hold it for the long term. However, the price at which you enter such a buy-and-hold trade is extremely important. If you get a price that's 50% cheaper, you'll make 100% more money over the lifetime of the investment, because you'll have twice as many shares as you would have otherwise. This year is a great year to enter a trade like that, because the market is so weak. But you never know how low prices will go, so the best strategy is to scale in.
Here are four relatively conservative buy targets for the S&P 500. These targets assume that we won't enter a full-scale recession this year, which is a big assumption. (Google "Federal government has dramatically expanded exposure to risky mortgages" to see why there's a lot of recession risk. A recession would be, by far, the best time to enter the market for a buy and hold play.) I was pleased this morning to see the market bounce hard from my first buy target. I managed to pick almost the exact bottom to get into the UPRO leveraged fund!
We probably will see more downside later this month, however, and I've got plenty of money in cash to take advantage if it falls that far. I like to triple my holdings at each successive buy target, so I've only acquired a relatively small position so far.
