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Bernie: Hi Everyone, I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Everyone on our team had a great time with our families and friends and all are settled in for this holiday season. Jim is traveling and will be back in the office early next week. I have a few updates before I provide you with Jim's comments.

First, if you need to wrap up any year -end tax planning please make sure you take care of it ASAP – examples include gifting, IRA contributions, etc. Next, don't forget that the Medicare Open Enrollment period will be closing on December 7th – so you only have a few days left to make your changes. Finally, a new item to add to our discussion that shows up in your cash flow spending or in your financial planning needs is long term care (LTC). November was LTC Awareness month - Did you know that more than 40% of people age 65 and over will go into a nursing home during their lifetime and about 10% will stay there for at least 5 years? If you have a policy and we haven't reviewed it, please send me a copy for us to get it reviewed. If you don't have a plan in place to pay for an extended stay in a nursing home, this is something that we will be reviewing with you in our upcoming account reviews.

I'll now proceed with Jim's comments that he emailed to me this morning.

Jim:

I was warmed by Jeffrey Saut's recent comments about past great names in the annals of revered students of the stock market. At the recent passing of Richard Russell, the esteemed writer of the DOW THEORY LETTER since 1958, Jeffrey paused to mention other great investor types like Alan Greenberg from Bear Stearns and the great late first lady of the markets, Muriel Siebert. When he mentioned the name of Marty Zweig I paused and realized that time had not stood still but has raced through my meager career that I started with EF Hutton in 1984.

For I remember attending as a young stock broker the red herring institutional meeting that launched the Zweig Total Return Fund in the fall of 1988. It was at one of those other ritzy hotels near the Plaza Hotel in New York City and brokers, as we were called, were all abuzz that the great Marty Zweig (no relation to current WSJ writer, Jason Zweig) was bringing a new closed end fund to market and it was going to be managed with different risk parameters than his original Zweig Fund he brought to market in 1986. The stock market crash a year earlier had moved him to create this type of fund.

Well it was as popular as could be, for investor's appetite for managing risk is notoriously insatiable when risk found in a stock market crash shows its ugly head. And, as typical for the investor public, that appetite waned substantially over the years, the fund lost significant attention to the point where [after Zweig sold the fund in the 1990's] it experienced the undesirable "reverse split" in 2012, the year before Zweig died.

The lesson is as old as the bible; investors are interested in risk management only after it's too late.

The management of risk is the forefront of our work with our investor clients today and we take time and great pride in our work in that area. But I am often reminded that the management of risk is the other side of the greed coin and often not recognized until it's too late.

Speaking of managing risk, our risk indicators are still telling us to keep the offense on the field for stocks, a position we were extolling during the heyday of market declines in August. And following form of recent disclosures in these conference calls over the past month, the 13-week T-bill has reversed into a column of X's for the first time in almost 7 years. So caution still remains high around the bond market and defensive positions remain in place.

Interest rates are finally changing, these are the early indicator signs and they have been part of our observations for recent time, there is more to follow, I am sure.

We will see you next Wednesday at 12:00 PM.

"Richard Russell" - Morning Tack

Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Raymond James & Associates. The author's opinions are subject to change without notice. Information contained was received from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy is not guaranteed. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing always involves risk and you may incur a profit or loss. No investment strategy can guarantee success. It is not possible to invest directly in an index. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index of 500 widely held stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an unmanaged index of 30 widely held securities. US government bonds and treasury bills are guaranteed by the US government and, if held to maturity, offer a fixed rate of return and guaranteed principal value. US government bonds are issued and guaranteed as to the timely payment of principal and interest by the federal government. Treasury bills are certificates reflecting short-term (less than one year) obligations of the US government.

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