Monday, December 31, 2007

A Look Back at 2007

1. Stock markets in the US and Canada were up this year.

The gains were small enough that some would call this a “sideways” market where only stock-pickers can make money. Of course, stock pickers can only make more money by taking it from each other. For every extra dollar that one stock picker made above this year’s average market return, some other stock picker made a dollar less than the average.

2. Apple stock more than doubled.

Technical analysts who study patterns in stock price charts could no doubt show you how this could have been predicted by their methods. Personally, I think it has more to do with those little iPod things that everyone is buying.

3. The Canadian dollar overtook the US dollar.

Only a few years ago the Canadian dollar was the butt of jokes. (What’s another name for the Canadian twonie? A US dollar.) I think Canadians told these jokes more often than Americans did. The higher Canadian dollar should have caused the price of goods imported into Canada to drop, but that hasn’t happened much yet. It will be interesting to see whether the Canadian dollar stays up long enough that market pressures force Canadian retailers to lower prices.

Have a fun and safe New Year’s Eve.

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