Argent Quarterly Investment Commentary – January 2017
“The times, they are a changin’.” – Bob Dylan
The 2016 year will certainly be marked in history as a year of surprises – good surprises, bad surprises and everything in between. It began, of course, with the worst January in stock market history. It appeared normalcy had returned by June, but the British BREXIT vote that month caused another sharp correction in U.S. markets, and an even bigger correction overseas. The downturn lasted only a week; in July stocks rebounded while interest rates hit all-time record lows. The big story of the fall was the U.S. election, and the Republican sweep in November that was predicted by . . . almost no one! That was followed by one of the greatest U.S. stock market year-end rallies in history. If you didn’t know better, you might even believe that the Cubs had won the World Series.
