It matters not what lines, numbers, indices, or gurus you worship, you just can’t know where the stock market is going or when it will change direction. Too much investor time and analytical effort is wasted trying to predict course corrections even more is squandered comparing portfolio Market Values with a handful of unrelated indices and averages. If we reconcile in our minds that we cant predict the future (or change the past), we can move through the uncertainty more productively. Let’s simplify portfolio performance evaluation by using information that we dont have to speculate about, and which is related to our own personal investment programs.
Every December, with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, investors begin to scrutinize their performance, formulate couldas and shouldas, and determine what to try next year. Its an annual, masochistic, right of passage. My year-end vision is different. I see a bunch of Wall Street fat cats, ROTF and LOL, while investors (and their alphabetically correct advisors) determine what to change, sell, buy, re-allocate, or adjust to make the next twelve months behave better financially than the last. What...