End of 2009

Great Balls of Fire! That was the headline in the NY Post with regard to the latest failed airline bombing. Gotta love them. Another rag had "pants on fire."

Great balls of fire was also 2009 and now I am happy to see it over. Many of us have had challenges this year, from health to jobs to just being on the wrong side of the stock market. But there is always something about which to be grateful. For me, it is having employment, a family, a house and readers - not necessarily in that order.

It is time for me to pack it in this year so this is the last blog post until Jan 4, when the stock market fireworks can be expected. After all, we are in a low volatility, low volume coil where everyone is expecting an explosion. We just cannot agree on which way.

For me, I end the year nearly flat. Bonuses will have been paid and as a reader commented in the previous blog post, the Fed is out of bullets.

Make your New Year celebration a safe one and we'll see you next week.

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.