The July issue of Financial Advisor magazine carries a story–“The Final Frontier”–written by yours truly on the topic of asset allocation. The main takeway: look often for boosting the odds of finding optimal rebalancing opportunities. The target audience is financial advisors, who must grapple with the rebalancing challenges that come with overseeing dozens if not hundreds of portfolios in real time. That’s a job for one of the various specialized rebalancing software packages on the market these days. The good news for individuals is that an Excel spreadsheet and an Internet connection will do just fine, courtesy of the fact that it’s relatively easy to monitor one or two portfolios with technology circa 1985. Professionals managing other people’s money, by contrast, are increasingly held to a substantially higher standard when it comes to prudent oversight policies.

Tomorrow’s weekly update on initial jobless claims will draw the usual crowd in search of clues on the outlook for the business cycle, but there’s another reason that new filings for unemployment benefits deserve careful scrutiny. Claims data provide another robust perspective on projecting the near-term outlook for the stock market.

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