On Monday the S&P 500 was down 1.3% and Toronto was down 0.5%.
Most of our stock picks were down. The Canadian dollar however rose a third of a cent.
It’s certainly not surprising or alarming to get a down a day like this. As for the next move, I don’t think such things are predictable. We are not getting into the Q4 earnings reports and those may drive the sentiment somewhat. Or numerous other bits of news could drive markets. It’s really quite normal for markets to gyrate.
Rather than try to predict markets it may be best to simply be positioned to react to changes. I like to keep an allocation to cash in case of bargains. And with the big market returns of the last two years (excluding commodity stocks) it seems prudent to have a higher allocation to cash than normal – though each person’s normal may differ. On the other hand if stocks go higher I would like to trim positions a bit in that case.