April was another good month for the stock market and for our portfolios. At the end of April we were still down for the year, but coming back.

Our portfolio modeled after the Fortune 500 closed the month at $9701, a gain of $674 for the month of April. The low risk portfolio closed at $9856.52, a gain of about $429. the medium risk portfolio gained $590 to close the month at $9886.75. Lastly our monthly rebalancing closed at $9854.53, a gain of $465, so we will be selling some shares to keep at our 50/50 balance.

May is off to a great start for the market. Of course there is no guarantee that we will not see a retrenchment soon. While I am cautiously optimistic that we have seen the worse of this cycle, I also think that the future will be very different from the recent past for the economy. The economy of the early 2000’s was overheated with a inflated demand for housing and considerable overspending by the American consumer. I don’t think those conditions will return in the near future.