All Is Quiet

Right now I'm on the grand voyage of looking for a home. As such, my investing has slowed down as I prepare for purchase of the house.

I finally closed out my portfolio portion of shipping company Seaspan. Other than that I've let the research go to the way side for now. Not smart but house buying and summer fun have gotten in the way.

Until now I've dealt exclusively in buying stocks long. No shorts, options, mutual, ETFs or bonds have entered the portfolio.

I'm about to add a new product to my fund. I'm going to research a Brazil broad market fund. I'm also going to attempt to dabble a small part of my portfolio in a junk bond fund.

My portfolio is humming along very well despite the gloom and doom of the mass media. I adhere to the Motley Fool philosophy is you can make money regardless of the market. The key is to find well run companies, return cash to investors and have a history of good shareholder relations. It helps that management owns a good size of stock to align their wealth with mine.

So why the change? It's not really a change. My overall investing thesis remains. I decided to branch of for exposure to different risk. Most my exposure to foreign markets is through the international portion of my 401. I decided country specific gets me more targeted returns but it comes at a higher risk. As for junk bonds, it's just a risk I'm willing to take for some higher yields as well as capital appreciation since it is a traded fund.

For disclosure purposes the funds I'm researching are the iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund (EWF) and iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (HYG). Actually I'm not sure High Yield is junk bonds but it's worth a look.

I should have a decision sometime next week.