I’ve been writing a weekly commentary now for almost ten years and I’ve missed very few weeks in that time. That’s a lot of Sunday afternoons and my lovely wife of 28 years has been very understanding. About four years ago she convinced me to take the last two weeks of the year off to enjoy the holidays with family. For the most part I do, but I also spend that time thinking about what went right and wrong during the year and doing some deep thinking about what the year ahead might bring. I think it is a very valuable two weeks and I have, as with so many things in my life, my wife to thank.
Her latest bit of advice is to change up the schedule for my commentary and reclaim those Sundays. In nearly 29 years of marriage she has rarely steered us wrong (I actually can’t think of even once) so today I’m just going to write a short note about some of the things I’ve been thinking about. I’m not sure exactly what the schedule will be in the new year but please watch your inbox. We’re going to try some new formats and schedules to see what works. Send us feedback if you have suggestions about how we can improve.
It was indeed a very difficult year for investors. The S&P 500 ended the year up 1.25% including dividends but that only tells a small part of the story when it comes to stocks. The so-called FANG stocks – Facebook (O:FB), Amazon (O:AMZN), Netflix (O:NFLX) and Google (O:GOOGL) – along with five others – Microsoft (O:MSFT), Salesforce.com Inc (N:CRM), eBay Inc (O:EBAY), Starbucks (O:SBUX) and Priceline.com Incorporated (O:PCLN)– outperformed the rest of the S&P 500 by over 60%. Take out just the FANG stocks and the S&P was down for the year. Take out the rest and it was a pretty lousy year. A narrowing like this is not generally a positive sign. Older folks like me might remember the Nifty Fifty and how that ended in the early 70s. That we’re down to the Nifty Nine probably isn’t particularly good news.
If you ventured outside of the cap weighted S&P 500 or the FANGed NASDAQ, you lost money. The Mid-cap index was down 2.3%. The small cap Russell 2000 was down. The well-loved and over owned dividend ETF was down. The foreign developed market index – EAFE – was down. Emerging market stocks were down over 15 %. Brazil was down 40%. Canada is in a bear market. The 7-10 year Treasury ETF was up just 1.5% while the long term Treasury ETF lost money. TIPs were down. High yield got a lot of attention but was down just 5%. Commodities? You don’t want to know.
There were a few stock markets up, most prominently Japan. Denmark was up more than 20% but who buys Denmark other than Danes? Same with Belgium. Ireland, the land of corporate inversions, was up 22%. Israel was up 7.8% but you can’t put a lot of your eggs in that volatile Middle Eastern basket.
What will 2016 bring? Well, heck, I don’t know the answer to that and neither does anyone else. But there are some interesting trends developing and I suspect there will be more money making opportunities this year than last. I’ll be writing about them – during the week – and I look forward to interacting with you all. So, good riddance to 2015 and welcome to 2016.