, Columnist
My Greatest Hits (and a Few Misses) for 2017
Humbled by bitcoin but affirmed by some stocks and hedge funds.
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Stocks climbed and bitcoin soared. The most hyped initial public offerings flopped even as the IPO market in general stealthily recovered. The stock that was the biggest favorite of active professional investors turned out to be a dud. And hedge funds were an overpriced disappointment once again.
I anticipated some of these market moves, but certainly not all of them. When it came to predicting individual stocks, I had far more hits than misses. But the bigger market calls -- the direction of stocks and whether the bitcoin bubble would pop -- I, like many others, mostly got wrong. Let's start with my biggest whiffs.