Hopefully you and yours enjoyed your Christmas.
Your extra present was a trading holiday on Monday this week.
I say it was a present, as the last month and a half has been like a lump of coal in your stocking.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock-index has found its way below 3800. It wasn’t that long ago that we were worried about 3600.
The 200 day moving average has also been a concern with movements below.
If there is to be a Santa Claus rally, it will have to begin on Tuesday, Dec. 27, and carry on for the next six trading days into the New Year, which is the tradition.
I am not sure there will be anything that resembles the past given what we have seen so far this year.
It is almost depressing listening to analyst drone about an upcoming recession.
Maybe that is due to my contrarian optimistic nature.
I would be less than truthful if I thought the Federal Reserve had a chance for a soft landing.
It does however seem to me that whatever slowdown there is in the economy, it will not be of a severe nature like 2008.
There will be little or no stimulus ability left to thwart any slowdown this time.
It just seems that though prices are higher, it is nothing like the 70s or late 80s.
We made it through the holidays one way or the other.
What I do think has happened, however, is a realization that all the new financial ideas that would supplant the old were taken out to the woodshed.
You will not get past having to gauge risk against reward.
There is little difference in human nature.
The ends in fact don’t justify the means.
It is that time of the year when you have to sit down and take an accounting of what they did this year.
Here is hoping your numbers are on the plus side.
Just remember that many have lost and came back stronger.
That is the beauty of free enterprise.
With a plan, patience and honest effort, anything is possible.
Just don’t confuse want with need.
You might just might find yourself far better off than you believed.
