Snowed In...Go Read

Well Chicago had an unlooked for and unwanted early season blizzard last night.  I'm guessing 6-8 inches around global HQ and it looks like it's just tapering off as I'm typing this.  Markets on cue are showing a very nice rally, anywhere up from 1-2% on most major indices.  This rally only gets us back to where we were early last week.  If we're going to have an end of the year rally then now is about the time it should get started.  A lack of a rally could be seen as a negative for the start of 2019.  

Nearly every asset class has had a rough year in 2019.  There's been no place to hide.  In that vein go read {if you have a subscription or can get behind it's paywall} the article over at the Wall Street Journal that chronicles asset class woes this year.  Go read "No Refuge For Investors as 2018 Sends Stocks, Bonds Oil Lower".  Here are a couple of things to take away from the article.

Global stocks and bonds are both on track to finish the year in the red for the first time in over 25 years.

90% of the 70 asset classes tracked by Deutsche Bank are posting negative total returns in dollar terms thought min-November, the highest share since 1901.

I'm not sure why that's so surprising since nearly everything worked last year and we had a perfect storm for asset investing back then.  Seems reasonable we'd regress towards the mean at some point and it keeps with my belief that we've spent this year consolidating those big gains from 2017-2017.  

I'll be back on Wednesday.