- The Dow 20,000 party is going to have to wait – at least for another day
- The Dow was down a little bit today – 23 to 19,918
- The broader market was a bit weaker than the Dow
- The markets continue to shrug off very weak economic news that came out throughout the day
- We got bombarded with all sorts of negative pieces of news that ordinarily, maybe before the election of Donald Trump, would have weighed down the market
- Certainly it would have weighed on the currency markets
- The dollar would have been very weak and gold would have had a big rally
- Instead, gold was down a little bit, and the dollar rose a little bit despite very weak economic data that I will get to
- I want to start off by focusing on the stock market and the optimism which is really quite ridiculous and unfounded
- Part of the reason for the rally, though, is a lack of selling
- We have a lot of people mindlessly buying the markets, but you don’t have a lot of selling
- One of the reasons is that people would rather sell in January than in December
- People are enthusiastic about Trump’s presidency because he will cut taxes
- If you have a gain in the stock market, why realize that gain now in the waning trading days of 2016
- If you sell now, not only do you have to get your check into the IRS by April of next year
- But also, you’ve got to pay the current tax rate
- If you wait until the firs week of January, you don’t have to pay taxes until a year from this coming April
- You have all that time to use the money and the tax rates may be a lot lower
- So why sell now? A lot of people are being given that advice; don’t sell now – wait until January
- Who knows – this market could ring in the new year with a major sell-off
