"It Just Doesn't Matter"

That tagline was the catalyst for John Winger's (Bill Murray) attempt to inspire the rest of his unit in the movie Stripes thanks for the corrective comments and emails it was Meatballs, not Stripes.

I had the same thought yesterday thinking about all of the cheerleading and all of the nay saying for the stock market.

I have been very clear all along that I expect 2006 to be down a little, the SPX between 1180 and 1219. For the first 50 trading days of the year I am flat out wrong. The S&P 500 is up 4.4% year to date.

That I am wrong does not matter, fortunately, because I have not tried to outguess a big turn in the market. I write this all the time. It might be correct to say I have a slight defensive bias but client accounts are close to fully invested and have been all year despite my belief about what the market will do.

For all of my opinions and concerns, I have said all along that the market has not yet cracked and until it does (here I mean breach the 200 DMA) I will not make big changes. I have made a couple of tweaks along the way and I think I have written about all of them but perhaps not.

The generic account that I maintain on Yahoo Finance is up 4.8% year to date not including dividends, they have to be added manually and I haven't gotten around to that yet. Individual client accounts may have done better or worse. That I am ahead by 0.40% is the same as being behind by 0.40%, I look to be dead wrong but am lucky enough to have stayed close.

This is easily repeated by any do-it-yourselfer because I have kept the portfolio diversified and did not knee jerk reduce exposure.

This has been a recurring theme here, right does not have to matter, and wrong does not have to matter. It all depends on how you implement you portfolio and whether you can subjugate your ego and realize you will be wrong from time to time.

One reminder would be that Barry Ritholtz predicted the market would start the year well before going down.