I was going to produce a more in depth look at how various markets performed over the past year but in doing so I would merely be replicating data others had already assembled. So I took the easy way out and just snipped theirs. The table below is a familiar one from Finviz and it looks at the performance of major markets for the year ending 31/12
Traditionally when you see stories about the performance of financial markets over the past year they seem to be full of surprise that markets actually did anything. I actually find this to be the least surprising aspect of markets – markets go up and markets go down. There is very little to be surprised about here. Although I do note that each year people pronounce that trend following is dead as if markets will never trend again.
What I do think this sort of performance ranking is good for is looking at your own performance within markets – it is a means of assessing your own efficiency at capturing portions of a trend. It is impossible to capture all of any given trend but if you didnt spot these trends at some stage then there is a problem with your analysis.
