I assume that as you read this our government is still shut down.

If it weren’t for the 800,000 federal workers who are not getting paid I would think this is funny.

The stock market is holding up well under this cloud, so far anyway. It seems like this happens every once in a while and it seems that Democrats usually hold the White House when it happens.

It hasn’t happened since my wife’s favorite president, Bill Clinton, was in power and it lasted over 25 days as I remember. When Jimjim Carter was president it happened about every year and I think it averaged about 11 days each time. Wonder how much in salaries we are saving every day? Let’s see, 800,000 times ........

We just finished up the third quarter of the year and the markets were up about 4.7 percent in the quarter. As I’ve been saying it doesn’t get much better than that. As I write this on Wednesday the broad markets as measured by the Wilshire 5000 index of most stocks traded is up 22.71 percent. Wow! That’s like getting returns of two years in one. Again, through Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average of 30 stocks is up 15.5 percent year-to-date. The Standard and Poor’s 500 is up 18.8 percent and the NASDAQ is roaring along up over 26 percent.

A lot of smaller stocks trade on NASDAQ so it is being helped by that. The Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks is up 27.5 percent and the S and P Midcap 400 is up 23.3 percent!

As you get tired of hearing me say, it doesn’t get much better than this. Many investors have gotten well here measuring from 2008 so now is a good time to make sure that your account is structured the way you want it. Don’t wait until the next bear market comes around to decide that maybe you need to change financial advisers or account structure. Do it now!

Looking at the foreign markets the Global Dow, not including the U.S., is up almost 9 percent. That number has been improving so this is a good thing. Japan is up 36 percent and no one else is even close.

Interest rates are still quite low which means if you buy things like Certificates of Deposit you are not a happy camper. Money market funds are equally low yielding. A five-year CD across the U.S. is averaging a return of 1.34 percent. That won’t even keep up with our relatively low inflation. Money market funds are yielding around 0.42 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Thirty-year mortgages are around 4.4 percent versus the low of around 3.5 percent in the last year. New car loans across the nation for a 48-month term average 2.8 percent, still a good deal.

In the commodities area record yields in some crops are driving prices down. Corn is getting bombed down to around the $4 area. That is a fall of about 30 percent from just a while back.

Soybeans just started to fall in September and that weakness is continuing but is only about 10 percent from the highs back in August. Cattle continues to edge upward, hogs have been a little weak after a fairly good rise. Coffee is really weak which is being reflected in the price at your grocer. Sugar is zooming upward in cost. Your chocolate is getting more expensive because cocoa continues to rise along with the sugar. I hate that.

Gold is down over 21 percent this year to about $1,320 per ounce, natural gas continues weak at around $3.50 and Crude oil is up about 13 percent to around $104 a barrel. My only thought in here is that the record yields our farmers are getting are not likely to occur on a regular basis going forward so I still think that, long term, food prices are going up. Oil prices are the mystery for me. We have an abundance of natural gas but oil keeps going up. Interesting.

The wife came storming into the Man Cave the other day checking on my activities.

She wanted to know what I was up to. I told her that I have noticed that people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older and I finally figured out why.

“Ok, I’ll bite,” she said. “Why do people read the Bible a whole lot more when they get older?”

“Because they are cramming for finals,” I shouted. She didn’t think that was funny.

Howie Pentony is a Saxonburg client portfolio manager.