Thursday, June 02, 2005

Quick Truckageddon Update

by Tom Bozzo

The view from Toyota (where truck sales in May were strong):
"The pendulum of consumer preference is swinging in favor of smaller SUVs, crossovers, hybrids and passenger cars," said Jim Press, [Toyotal Motor Sales, U.S.A.] executive vice president and COO.
Not a moment too soon, as some a****** who could only have been in a Tall Vehicle popped (another) big ding in Suzanne's poor wagon.
Comments:
Nothing pisses me off more than someone dinging my car door. I park in the boonies too! I one had a Hummer H1 at my college back into my parked car. The trailor hitch put a 8" channel into my trunk! Think Toyota would be a good investment for the long term? I need some IRA investing direction. Socially Concious industries need only apply.
 
Toyota is probably as well-positioned as any current automaker to weather a world of sustained high fuel prices. More broadly, Toyota and Honda are at the environmentally-friendly end of the auto industry's spectrum, if you don't object to investing there on other grounds.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the transportation industry weighting of Vanguard's socially conscious fund is very low. (Its performance isn't great, though its inception was close to the market peak.)

It's a tough economy for investment picking, as practically all assets are looking expensive (stocks, bonds, real estate), but your time horizon is long. So you could pick a low-cost socially conscious stock portfolio and a Treasury bond index fund -- imagine the U.S. budget deficit coming from entitlements, if you will -- allocate your money in something like an 80-20 to 70-30 ratio favoring stocks, as fund investment minimums permit, and ignore your statements for a few years while the economy (hopefully) sorts itself out.
 
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