Today’s “loss of Jobs Report” convinced quite a few people that the economy is either already in or soon to be in a recession. It’s amazing that with all the other data that has been around for months, suddenly this one report is all that it took to bring supposedly smart people over to the dark side. Maybe it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back but I find this a little absurd and useless. In the past, I ripped on the market moving on the Jobs Report whether it was up, down or flat and whether or not the economists guesstimates were off by tens of thousands compared to the government’s initial guess that will be revised about 3 more times. So forgive me if I am not going to jump on the recession bandwagon just because this report was so crappy. Besides, I am not too excited about being potentially associated with some in the crowd that were so clueless until caving in today.

I felt the same way when many economists, politicians, “journalists” et al were denying that the economy was struggling. How many times did I have to hear the President and his crew say the “underlying economy is sound” before I realized it really hadn’t made a single impact on how I did my work with HEDGEfolios? Exactly Zero. I never said to myself, “Hey we are not in a recession so let’s go buy every stock.” And I won’t be doing the reverse. There are always stocks to buy and always stocks to sell every day whether we are in boom or bust. I know other investors conduct portfolio management based upon giant macro themes and seek out individual stocks that are supposedly recession proof. I hope it works for them and I am sure that they will probably be spending this weekend figuring out how to adjust their folios. As I’ve said before, I don’t go defensive. Hearing a consensus of economists announcing that this one Jobs Report seals the deal certainly doesn’t change my opinion about how to manage stocks. I have no idea how knowing we are in or not in a Recession will tell me exactly which stocks I need to buy or sell. Today’s action was not helped by the reality that our economy is struggling but there were many other factors that caused it to slide. Yesterday there were other reasons. Next week there will be other reasons. Those are the things I am focusing on.

I am declaring this my Recession Secession. I am simply not going to give any credibility to the idea that yesterday we were maybe not in a recession and today we probably are. So I am seceding from the Recession camp and leaving it to people who really care.