Friday File: Toasting Gold until it Hertz?

Another wacky week, though it seemed downright placid after the previous couple weeks. Another reminder that any kind of “outlook” for the rest of the year is a guess, at best. Things might work out fine, but the potential for very bad market outcomes is higher than usual due to the combination of rich valuations, extreme economic uncertainty, and high-wire negotiations about trade and currencies and the government budget that could flip quickly.

My basic strategy remains pretty simple as I make peace with this more volatile market and world, this is what I’m telling myself:

Keep hedges in place, just in case, resist the urge to cash in on them early — risky, but worth the cost for some peace of mind. That includes both index ETF put options and gold. Hold on to extra cash, hoping to be greedy if excellent companies fall to irresistible levels. Stay diversified, and, on the margins, be mindful of diversification away from what has been working best over the past five years — mostly meaning less large-cap tech, more foreign exposure. Keep nibbling on companies I like when they trade at reasonable (or cheap) valuations, so I don’t freeze up and lose the “buy” habit that I’ll need longer-term… but mostly keep those buys small in the absence of truly compelling valuations for great companies (not a lot of those around right now, but hopefully bargains will emerge). Stay humble, don’t hide entirely, and stay mostly invested. You do not know what the future holds.

So with all that in the background, what’s on my mind this week? Well, first of all, I’m delighted that the market is closed for three days in a row — and in the near term, it’s probably at least a little bit reassuring that the market didn’t crash going into a three-day weekend. I imagine that if you’re more of a trader, holding on through three days of who-knows-what’s-coming news flow must be a little nerve-wracking.

Other than that? A few things rise to the top this week…

A Toast to Applebee’s?

Dine Brands (DIN), the parent of Applebee’s restaurants (and a couple other chains) announced this week that it would use Toast (TOST) POS terminals and systems in all of their Applebee’s locations in the US, and that’s a BIG deal. That is by far the biggest chain Toast has “won” yet, with …