Who knew at the start of 2018 that the stock market’s ride would be this wild? Although after a very lucrative 2017, it should have been reasonable to expect a change.
The challenge is always to try to determine which way to go – going forward. It turns out that hindsight is not very helpful looking forward. Looking backwards, I would say it was easy to see that a trade war with tariffs and the resulting business disruptions and uncertainty were going to be a problem. But, the timing, magnitude, and duration of the challenges were and actually still are hard to quantify.
If foresight was any good, we may have known when to make some changes, but I’m pretty sure art and fine wine would not have been my alternate investments.
Luxury Goods Outperform as Markets Swoon WSJ 12-31-2018
On the other hand, in spite of its lumps and bumps our democracy and capitalism based economy will almost certainly continue to work going forward. And, although Art and Fine Wine may be perfectly good asset classes, I think I’ll stick with Equity, Fixed Income, and Cash along with some real estate for my investment assets.
Have a Happy New Year!