In case you haven’t heard, the S&P 500 closed the year at 1257.60 this past Friday. That’s just a hair down from the 2010 closing price of 1257.64 — essentially even in the grand scheme of things.
Despite the flat performance overall, the past year was anything but uneventful. Don’t believe me? Check out the graph below.
After some nice gains during the first half of the year, Congress managed to cook up a crisis which resulted in a US credit downgrade and dramatic losses stock market losses. From that point forward, the market gradually regained its footing, though it was far from a smooth recovery.
Of course, the above numbers ignore dividend reinvestment. After account for dividends, the market (as measured by the S&P 500) returned something close to 2% for the year. Not great, especially given the volatility, but better than nothing.
Through it all, I managed to do a good bit of tax loss harvesting on the equity side, and we also benefited nicely from our bond holdings (Total Bond Market [VBMFX] and TIPS [VIPSX]), which account for roughly 40% of our total portfolio.
With that as a backdrop, I though it would be fun to run a poll asking for 2012 stock market predictions…
{democracy:152}
If you’d like to make a guess as to the specific closing price at the end of 2012, please do so in the comments section (but please also select a poll choice). You won’t win anything but bragging rights if you get ir right, but hey…
Bragging is kinda fun. 😉
Note: E-mail and RSS subscribers may need to click through for the poll to work.
Oh how hindsight is 20/20. Let’s hope that 2012 is more prosperous!