Courtesy of Daniel Sckolnik, ETF Periscope
One Man’s Oracle is Just Another’s Cup of Tea Leaves
“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning. “ — Lao Tzu
For numerous Wall Street investors, the past year had all the marks of a funhouse run amuck. Little fun, lots of muck.
Whipsaw market action created vertigo amongst even seasoned money managers.
Frequent doses of high volatility scared away small retail investors in droves, but not before they realized that the pockets of their portfolios had been picked yet again by the wild price gyrations that trailed in the wake of whatever boat happened to carry the most recent cargo of news.
Gold bugs multiplied exponentially as the shiny metal scaled the walls of record highs, only to be rudely confronted by the sound of a pop in the bubble.
Tears and fear could be seen and felt as the devastating effect of nature’s one-two punch of earthquake and tsunami took its toll on Japan, both in human suffering and global economic impact.
The bad comedy of political theater out of Washington left more observers than usual scratching their heads and wondering if there was even a remote chance that any adults would appear to send the mischievous rascals mistakenly put in charge off to their rooms without any supper.
Then there was Europe, up to its continental eyeballs in sovereign debt. Despite perhaps an intrinsic flaw in its monetary structure that offered no exit, the European Union held periodic summits promising results that were not to be.
However, the pronouncements were often made with sufficient conviction to rally the troops of Wall Street investors to the cause, sending prices higher until they recognized that no real solutions had been put into play.
As the Periscope has noted before, it wasn’t a bad year to have simply taken the year off, retreated to the sidelines on some tropical beach, ready to emerge around the New Year, tan, fit and ready to invest.
In any event, now is the beginning of the New Year, and a perfect time to throw the runes and make fearless predictions.
Here, then, are a few more for your consideration and entertainment.
What the Periscope Sees
If the…
