What to expect January 2017

Welcome to 2017 and just so you know this is not a prediction. I just want to show you what the last 3 years of January's have done. 

 

Last january it was a basic explosion to the downside and that was part of the issue for me trying to recover the rest of the year. I didn’t do as bad as most indexes and L-funds, but I still had an almost 3% loss. 

 

On the chart above you need to look at the YTD2015 column and the YTD2014 column. Let’s just say they both sucked. 

 

So I guess a smart person would look at the last 3 years and decide to just sit on the sidelines and wait it out. Well, I use to do that. Tea leaves and daily charts. It didn’t workout too well for me. This time I guess I will just play it using my monthly charts and if it collapses, I will make a decision January 31st to stay or get out. This is how I plan to keep the emotions out of the picture and just run with trend. I really do not need to end up with the largest gain, but I do target 7% annually. Last year I came up just short 5.79%. 

 

I’m not predicting the market direction, because only time will tell what happend in the future. But what I can tell you is this year going into January, the charts for the S&P 500 and Small Cap look so much better than they did a year ago. Maybe this time around we will see better results. 

 

Tuesday, January 3rd is the beginning of the Stock Market year of 2017.