The year is winding down but it seems determined to go out with a bang. Santa Claus has shown up with almost 600 Dow points in his bag the past couple of days and those most terribly awful fears that the bull market was ending that were souring the punch last week have floated away in a cloud of candy canes and pixie dust. The bulls are back, the bears are wounded yet again and the parade marches on.
It is that tine of the year as we all rush around to get ready for the holidays and pundits to scramble to their highly accurate , guaranteed to be right predictions for the market and economy for next year. I got mine done already and it was included in the excellent Benzinga E-Book Market Outlook 2015 (You can get a free copy here: http://vip.marketfy.com/2015/. Some very smart guys talking about 2015 possibilities and potential including Tobias Carlisle, Nate Tobik, Doug Kass, Cate Long and others).
When asked for an outlook for next year and watch to watch for I said” Ignore all predictions and forecasts. They are simply guesses and risking your cash on a guess is fool hardy. React to what the market does rather than trying to predict what might happen. If the markets fall creating lots of safe and cheap stocks be a buyer. If they move up to levels where stocks are selling above their intrinsic value be a seller. Focus on cheap stocks with a margin of safety in the balance sheet and ignore the day to day market noise as much as possible. To really escape the noise of the broader market focus on community banks at a discount to book value and have sound balance sheets and loan portfolios.Favor those with high insider ...
