Last year came and went but not without a good bit of excitement and intrigue along the way.
We saw:
And that is just a partial list.
In the last newsletter, I focused on the statistical probabilities of stock market performance in 2015 based on the Presidential and Decennial cycles.
As I stated in that missive:
“'Predictions Are Difficult…Especially When They Are About The Future' – Niels Bohr
We can't predict the future – if it were possible fortune tellers would all win the lottery. They don't, we can't, and we aren't going to try to. However, we can analyze what has happened in the past, weed through the noise of the present and try to discern the possible outcomes of the future.”
Currently, every single Wall Street analyst surveyed currently expects 2015 to continue its current six (6) year string of bullish advances into a seventh (7th). From a contrarian standpoint, when everybody agrees something else tends to happen.
My friend Bob Bronson sent me the following note this past week:
“Keeping it simple: there have never been more than seven years without a bear market or at least a negative calendar year – or both – in at least 144 years of the u.s. stock market, so why will 2015 be different?
Maybe this is not numerology: the last time Dec was a down month and the seven-trading day so-called Santa Claus rally was negative at year end was 2007, a precursor to the 38% decline the following calendar year of 2008 and an accelerator to the 17-month, 58% bear market from the Oct 7 ‘07 high (SPX 1576.09) through the March 9 ‘09 low (SPX 666.79).”
