agip you are incorrigible.
I did not suggest healthcare "for 2016". I suggested to buy it probably some time in 2016 "when the price was right", but not to sell it. Ditto everything else I mentioned.
Also, buying "when the price is right" means BTFD. However, I do not advocate buying the entire market during a dip, but only buying particular things, as I outlined.
If you want to talk short-to-medium-term, buy any business that will benefit from repatriation, they will surely use a bunch of it for buybacks; but don't buy until 2017, because there will be some tax-based selling going on.
Also if you are looking short-to-medium-term, and I can't believe I'm saying this, buy financials. Gov't interference in the private markets will only continue to increase, and that interference is increasingly made via banks. Even though they suck, they will do well.
Also I still like NFLX and AMZN. The conspirator in me says also buy any IT sector that can help out the gov't...there is always a quid pro quo, and Trump knows that better than anyone. The gov't will have to give to get, and shareholders will be the beneficiaries of that giving.
Also, when talking about the near term when I said "meantime, continue to short the CAD", I was also very, very right. Went from .7284 down to .6867 and didn't recover its initial level until Feb 23. I did well on that although I did not hold a huge position.
Interest rates? I don't think we will see them rise as much as people think. The debt situation is terrible, and taxation dollar figures can't rise too much. Also any fed infrastructure spending will infect state and municipal infrastructure spending, which will be debt-financed.
I still believe that "this time it's different", for all the reasons that I have already given. Many who proclaim that certain market events are "inevitable" are blatantly ignoring the structural and social changes that have taken place in the markets, including the proliferation of algos and HFT, and the increasing share of foreign ownership of the markets. It is not only the MANNER in which trading is accomplished that is changing, it is also the SENSIBILITIES of those trading that is changing.
And significantly, too. Think of the housing market as an analogy. Certain areas of the world attract big money, places like Monaco, Vancouver, SF, London, etc., and by any objective measure, RE there is ridiculously overpriced.
Or is it? Those places exist within an internationally contextual RE market, and they stand out to international RE market participants as particularly notable. I argue that US equities also exist within an internationally contextual equity market, and that they also stand out to international equity market participants as particularly notable.
Just as with RE, perceptions of certain conditions, relative to the conditions elsewhere in the international market, are what make them stand out. With RE it is things like demographics, climate, how many questions the country asks about capital inflow, taxation levels, political stability, etc. With equity markets it is things like political stability, economic conditions, reserve currency control, denomination, trade policy, monetary policy, tax policy, etc.
Current international perceptions are that the US equity market stands out from the crowd--and when something stands out, it is also singled out for special consideration in terms of price. No longer is it priced in accordance with normative standards encompassing all markets; it instead becomes a thing unto itself, much like those niche RE markets.
As I have said before, internationally it is the only game in town, as far as equities are concerned. Sure there is still speculation in other markets, but this is where the action is. Everybody with a few bucks and half a brain knows what the game is, and how the US system is managed, and everybody who can buy in, is buying in. I think that foreign ownership is up to something like 25% or more, and rising every day. Although the aggregate of the american everyman is still a large segment, they are content to ride the wave created by others. Look at volumes, and look at who is selling--nobody. In fact selling is such a notable event that the stupid pension funds are announcing their intentions, because they have no worries that anybody will short based on that news...because everybody is buying, and dominating any selling that they might do.
So don't be surprised to see US equities reach for the stratosphere. It's not a "normal" market, and it is increasingly less and less related to the international system of markets. Don't look to "international alternatives" for pricing information, because there AREN'T any actual "alternatives".
For certain reasons, the US market is "it", and when enough people with enough money pile into a certain place, it becomes a haven of the wealthy. This is what the US equity market is fast becoming; and such a haven does not easily fall apart, because more and more of its participants are increasingly like-minded.
The problem with the US markets is that it is easy enough to get out, quickly. Of course there are mechanisms to dislocate the process of too many participants doing this at one time. Combined with central bank interventions and other buying, the LULD system is geared upwards; and specific exchange circuit breakers are also biased toward the positive.
So like agip I also don't foresee a loss in 2017, especially if you wait a bit to buy after the start of the new year.
lol at myself.