What is Rough and Troubling?

I have been thinking a lot about the stock market lately, but not for the reasons most people think about it. The most common thing people wonder about the stock market is something like this: “Is the market about to go up, or down?” I think long-time readers of the Dividend Cafe know how I feel about that question (“long-time” could mean the last two weeks in this case). I am always and forever agnostic about short-term moves in the broad stock market, not merely around anyone’s (including my own) ability to forecast such, but also around the relevance of it to one’s actual financial picture. But I hear things said about the stock market sometimes that simply concern me. I am going to address a lot of those things this week and look at some basic historical facts of the market and the environment in which we find ourselves. My goal will be to look at what does not represent a “rough” or “troubling” market environment, and what does. And in so doing, I hope we can find some takeaways about portfolio construction that speak to a present application that you will find useful. Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com