What Comes Next?

The road ahead really is pretty unclear.
The stock market may have been expressing a little of the uncertainty that awaits as we get ready to see the proverbial rubber hit the road.
What may be coming clear to some is that the bluster may not have too much behind it.
Or maybe it will.
That’s the problem.
We are in such untested waters that it may be crazy to actually put anything at risk right now, especially as we still sit so close to all time highs.
As we await Inauguration Day and we will be back to having only a single President at a time, we may get to find out whether words will be finding their counterpart in actions.
What we know right now is that we probably shouldn’t have taken too many words with a literal meaning.
What we also know is that there may not be very much agreement between the President and the other elected officials across from him in the Capital.
Even ones in his own party.
With President-Elect Trump sounding off about the first iteration of a GOP tax plan as being “too complicated,” its hard to know whether they will push back or whether everything the new President will say is just the beginning of a negotiating position.
If the latter is the case and the President-Elect can actually get any movement on anything, he could easily go down as the greatest President of all, at least in the 21st century.
I’m still very hopeful that candidate Trump and President Trump will be very different, even as President-Elect Trump isn’t showing much distance from the candidate himself.
Today, the market was a little squeamish, but not really bad, as it backed off a little further from that 20,000 level.
What I liked and continue to like about 2017, is that it was yet another day with some trades to be made and another day to see net asset portfolio value rise.
That continues from where 2016 left off, even as 2016 didn’t have anywhere near as many trades as I would have liked.
Over the next few weeks, the landscape is altered by earnings, so I don’t think that I want to risk too much capital at a time when there is so much uncertainty brewing and companies have really no clue as to how to really give guidance.
Will there be a border tariff? Will they be able to repatriate foreign funds? Will their tax rates change?
Too many questions with no obvious answers.
For now, I just hope to be able to continue making these small trades, week after week and putting laggards to work.
 

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