End of Year Prognosticators

Retail, Airlines and Energy are the sectors in the news thanks to the holiday, terrorism and geopolitical events, respectively. Do any of them matter this week as we have our second short and thin week in a row? How about healthcare now the light at the end of the tunnel is visible? My column this afternoon will be on healthcare so I won't spoil it here.

This is the time of year when the pundits look back and then look ahead. Every one is wrong. From predictions that Israel will attack Iran to Stimulus 13 (I cannot recall what number we are already on) it seems that everyone has an opinion on everything. Does the market's opinion no longer count?

I do not have a major revelation for you here today, partly because nobody knows the future and partly because I am trying to have a working vacation (does that really exist?). I've done the work part for today so I am rather eager to get away from my computer.

In general terms, however, I do "see" the stock market getting clobbered. What I do not see is when, since the evidence on the charts just shows a slow chug higher. It is the intangibles, from sentiment to smugness that all is well with the world because the economy is on the way back, that scares me.