Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Taking Stock of a Very Weird Year in Markets

Rarely have investors had such consistent, steady gains. That bodes well for the future.

January 3, 2018 at 4:32 PM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

This is getting monotonous.
Photographer: Raymond Roid/AFP/Getty Images

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Last year was just plain weird. I am not referring to politics, although that certainly was one for the ages. Rather, I mean the technical state of the markets. No matter where you looked, there were anomalies, aberrations and just plain weirdness going on.

The context for these eccentricities was the domination of false market narratives 1514994670916(see this, this, this, this, and this). These exist every year, but the intersection of politics and markets was especially acute in 2017. And it shows no signs of abating in 2018.