Friends
Well, Santa delivered us quite a nice Holiday rally in December (unless we give it all back today) didn’t he? As of the opening this morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 5% for the month and the S&P 500 is up more than 6% for the month. Trading has been very light for the past two weeks as traders seem content to hold their hand into the end of the year. Optimism is growing, as sell side strategists have been inundating us with bullish forecasts for 2011. They point out that the third year of a Presidential term is typically positive, and that growth will be better than previously thought.
On the disappointing side this week, we got more discouraging numbers out of the housing industry as the downturn in prices has resumed in many markets around the country. On the other hand (I sound like an economist now), weekly unemployment claims fell below 400,000 for the first time in a while, consumer sentiment numbers were better and the Chicago PMI number was the highest in over 12 years. We got news that, for the first time in a couple of years, more money moved to equity mutual funds than into bond funds. Has that shift just begun? Will we continue to see investors pour money into stocks and take money out of bonds? Will interest rates continue to rise on the longer end of the yield curve? Will commodities, namely oil, gold, copper and grains continue to rise in the torrid pace that was set in 2010?
We will address all of these items in detail in our First Quarter 2011 Outlook that will be available next week. Clients will receive an e-mail copy of the report as well as a hard copy included in their 4th Quarter Summary Statement due out later in January. For those of you who are not yet clients of ours, contact Carolyn Thornton at carolyn@chjwealthmanagement.com. She will arrange to get you a copy.
We here at CHJ want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year. 2010 was quite an exciting year for us, and we appreciate you letting us be your Investment Advisor and being part of our journey. We will do our best to deliver to you the premier investment experience that you deserve and we strive to deliver. Here’s hoping that 2011 is a great year.
