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Jim: Hi everyone, welcome to our last midweek, midday market update call for this year, a year in which we are very glad will be over shortly. I say that knowing that just because the calendar year is ending, doesn’t mean the behavior changes inside our markets. If only we were so lucky to be able to work like that—have an uncertain year in the market—and boom, close the door and move on at will to a better year.

Some of you may remember me mentioning Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal when he used to write the NUMBERS GUY column for that paper. My favorite contribution of his, of course, is the Arbitrary Numerical Milestones column he wrote in February 2010 which points out investors tend to think in terms of benchmarks and barriers and choose to round up or round down, using convenience as an excuse for lopping off important data as if sweeping the floor for the last whisk. A copy of this article is available to WSJ subscribers here. Carl Bialik, is now working for Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, the organization that specializes in numbers, statistics and mostly politics, boy they must be very busy these days, Tameika.

Tameika Aldridge is sitting in for Bernie Murff today, she is off on vacation with her family, and Tameika has some thoughts to pass onto you all before I go over the market numbers, Tameika?

Tameika: Happy Holidays everyone and thank you Jim.

Bernie has two announcements for today:

First, please join us in welcoming our 8^th intern, Christopher Straus! Chris is currently attending Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and will earn his Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance with a Minor in Mathematics in May of 2016.

Chris has been very active in the Student Government and his Fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He has held several key positions with each of those organizations.

He is a native of Richmond and enjoys running. He actually runs marathons.

 If you have the chance to speak to Chris when he answers the phone, take a moment to welcome him to the team. We think that you will enjoy his enthusiastic attitude!

Second, we will be hosting a Social Security Conference Call in late January. The call will highlight the most recent changes around filing choices. Please keep an eye out for more details after the first of the year.

I’ll now turn the call over to Jim for his market updates.

Jim: This was the year that was or perhaps the year that wasn’t. What it wasn’t will be featured in a special conference call in January that analyzes the outlooks predicted at the beginning of 2015. I believe this year’s assessment will be one of the most revealing in recent times. Every January for the past 7 years I have saved a select few investment communities’ predictions from the prior January and checked things out as to how the investment world played out to their liking. Sadly, they have never been highly accurate, and to us gives us every good reason to avoid predictions as a way of making important investment decisions. So being the tough year that it was—the S&P 500 was up and down 16 times on week to week cycles—most investors are looking for when this will all end. If Yogi Berra was still alive he’d say it will be over when it’s over. Markets normally trend in one direction or the other, and as I said earlier they don’t just stop doing one thing or another just because it is the end of the year. In 2014, there were multiple groups of weeks where at least 6 to 8 weeks in arrow would be up. In 2015, there were just two periods where 3 weeks in a row it was in the same direction and they were in the down direction.

Let’s go to the details, the market data, pulled just moments ago. Let’s start with interest rates: the 5-year treasury yield hit a new 52 week high this morning and the 10 year and 30 year are but 20 basis points away from doing the same. Remember 20 basis points is the same as .20%. If the 30 year treasury yield is 3.08%, when it reaches 20 basis points higher it will be at 3.28% and at a 52 week high for that treasury yield. The times they are a changing and yields still look like they will trend higher, having trended lower for more than 2 decades.

The New York Stock Exchange bullish percent, our major indicator is in a bullish place on the playing field, but currently in pullback or resting phase. The other large pocket we look at is the Over the counter market and stocks in that group are still bullish, though we are accustomed to pulling ideas from the first group more often. The third large group we look at—the stocks that have options that trade in a different market from where stocks trade—that group is quiet as well. So we will keep our powder dry until we see more stocks we are attracted to improve and show more strength.

Oddball investments usually show up being the leaders when a year like we have had closes out and such is the case when we look at worldwide choices we all had just 30 days ago. Leaders as we close out December are the countries of Jordan, Bulgaria and Egypt…

As far as sectors are concerned in the US markets, the last 30 days has shown a surge in Utilities, Precious metals and Semiconductors. Oddly, Gold is not participating with the other precious metals and precious metal mining companies, as it is the lowest it has been in more than 4 years. Go figure, my friends Harry and Howie would say.

And for today and 2015, that’s all we have, if you have any questions, comments or observations please now is a good time to do so.

Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Raymond James & Associates. The author's opinions are subject to change without notice. Information contained was received from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy is not guaranteed. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing always involves risk and you may incur a profit or loss. No investment strategy can guarantee success. It is not possible to invest directly in an index. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index of 500 widely held stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an unmanaged index of 30 widely held securities. US government bonds and treasury bills are guaranteed by the US government and, if held to maturity, offer a fixed rate of return and guaranteed principal value. US government bonds are issued and guaranteed as to the timely payment of principal and interest by the federal government. Treasury bills are certificates reflecting short-term (less than one year) obligations of the US government.

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