Another Year
The first trading week of 2024 wrapped up on Friday. All three major indices were down, ending their 9-week winning streaks. The S&P 500 fell 1.52%, the Dow fell 0.59%, and the Nasdaq was the big loser on the week, falling 3.25%.
As mentioned last week, we don’t know what 2024 will bring. We expect to be surprised—since markets tend to be surprising. But, if you have a good, disciplined investment process, it should be just another year to go on doing the best you can and see where things fall. Howard Marks, whom we quote so often, said it well in a conversation that was released last week:
This has been another year like the last fifty-four. You start the year—sometimes you think you know what’s going to happen, sometimes you know you don’t know what’s going to happen. And usually it turns out that the time you were wrong was when you thought you knew what was going to happen. We never really know what’s going to happen.
The great Peter Bernstein once said, essentially: “We walk everyday into the unknown.” And it’s much more profitable to acknowledge that we walk into the unknown than to have a very definite opinion of what’s going to happen, bet heavily, and take the chance of being wrong.
So we will enter ‘24 knowing that we don’t know what the future holds, but paying great attention to our individual investments. That’s what we’ve done to date, and we think is the way to success.
Manage risk. Be humble. Diversify as much as makes sense for your situation and your psyche. This is the way—in 2024 and beyond.
“I don’t always have a notion of where the market’s headed, but usually I do. I’ve found that sometimes I’m right and sometimes I'm wrong. All in all, my calls are useless.” —Ralph Wanger
Tweets of the Week
In Case You Missed it…
The End of Cookies: Google Begins its Data Disruption
Active Patience - by Ian Cassel
Active vs. Passive Learning - by Morgan Housel
Data Update 1 for 2024: The Data Speaks, but what is it saying? - by Aswath Damodaran
Chart of the Week: ISM Services Employment Collapse
Interview with David Kim a.k.a. Scuttleblurb (2024 Edition)
Business Breakdowns Podcast: Live Oak: The Small Business Bank
Masters in Business Podcast: Matt Levine on Money and Stuff
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