The Wrong Foot

No need to mince words - that was one ugly way to start off the new trading year.

Although I’m slammed with hundreds of email & post vacation catch-up tasks and didn’t pay that close attention to the tape, from what I could tell it sure didn’t take much to bring the market down.

It’s only just a guess, but did everyone simply wait until the start of the new year to take their profits off the table (in order to defer capital gains until 2009?) Or, have the bulls lost one of their last remaining weapons (i.e. “stocks always go up in December” and “Santa Clause rally” nonsense). Just speculating here - I simply don’t know and I’m not going to pretend that I do.

However, I will say this - we are far from being oversold (even with today’s beat down) and have a good way to go before we are again. My plan now, just like in December, is to wait until we are again or until I have information and analysis to indicate a different plan of attack. As you know, I always try to approach the market with an open and opportunistic mindset and I’m doing my best to evaluate the market from that point of view as we start the new year.

On a much different note, I hope the holidays were kind to you and family. I enjoyed getting to know one of our newest members over Christmas (see picture above). One of the nicest gifts I received was to be asked to become her Godfather. Among many other things, I’m personally looking forward to that the most in 2008.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some more performance stats as well as information on who members thought the next President of the United States will be according to the latest membership survey. I think you’ll find it of interest ahead of the Iowa Caucus. Later!