The total U.S. stock market has finished the year with a
rock-solid return. That should come as
no surprise to anybody because I told you we were moving higher.
On
the other hand, 2017 was just chocked full of anomalies, not the least of which
was the 2016 election (yeah, I’m calling that as part of the 2017
‘thing’). Oh wait, then Bitcoin and then
CME launched Bitcoin futures!! Now I’m told to watch for the possibility of a new
asset class in 2018: Derivatives on cryptocurrencies!!! (notice how the number
of exclamation points increased with what I think is the absurdity of it all) That’s
just weird. I won’t be trading those
because of my lack of confidence in the underlying. Before you trade Bitcoin derivatives you
should believe in Bitcoin futures and in order to believe in Bitcoin futures you
need to believe in Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah, I know.
You didn’t come here to hear this, you came here to hear what I plan to
do regarding my long term investment portfolio, well, here you go.
First, if you
have been 100% invested in the total U.S. stock market, as I have, your 2017
return is approximately 20%. Nice.
As you know, I’ve
been long this market since March 2009, when I called the bottom, coming off
the crash of 2007. If you have been long
without fail since 2009 you are currently enjoying a return of about 367%. Not
too shabby.
What do I see
going forward? Additional growth. I will
continue to Dollar Cost Average any long term (retirement) investment money
into a no-load, stock market mutual fund that mirrors the Wilshire 5000.
I will continue
to do this until the market issues a sell signal and will deal with that thing
then.
Happy and Healthy
2018 to you and yours.