Well, the first quarter of 2015 is now history, and it wasn’t exactly a barn-burner. With all the central bank intervention, wild ride in oil prices, insanity in the Middle East, and whatever other lunacy was pressed into the last three months, it resulted in a Dow Jones Average that was……massively unchanged. It. Went. Nowhere.
Precious metals sucked out loud, with gold down about 7%.
Personally, I’ve been far more interested in shorting energy-related stocks. although, unfortunately for me, they only inched down about 1% for the quarter (based on the oil and gas index).
Even with the price of crude oil plunging, the Dow Transports ended in the red, falling about 4%. The most important point I can make about the market, though, is expressed in the graph below – – it resembles the silly kind of up-and-down chart a small child might make on construction paper. Just no clear direction at all.
And finally, I will give April a warm welcome with one of my favorite songs sung by the perpetually sweet Art Garfunkel: