Bloomberg columnist and market analyst Barry Ritholtz noted that last year’s technical state of the market was “just plain weird”. Although 2017 was very volatile news-wise, what with daily Trump tweets, North Korean missile tests and a steady stream of terrorist attacks around the world, U.S. stock market volatility was its lowest in fifty years. Normally, markets are regularly rocked by headlines from around the world, but Ritholtz found you have to go back to 1964 to find a year with as small a maximum daily change as 2017. In addition, the S&P 500 total return index finished up every single month in a row for the last 13 months, another multi-decade record. The disconnect between the news and the markets was very unusual indeed – “just plain weird”.
Just Plain Weird
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January 12, 2018