You have probably been inundated with information about what happened in the markets in 2014. What we are going to do here is try to get into the meat of what really was going on.

As you know, numbers sometimes don’t tell you the real story, but we need to start out by looking at them.

For the year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7.5 percent.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 was up 11 percent, nothing shabby about that. It is an index of the 500 largest domestic stocks measured by their stock market capitalization or what the total value of their stock is in the market.

The NASDAQ was playing catch-up and was up 13.4 percent.

Most of the averages were near record highs but that was very misleading. If you owned energy stocks for instance, you were probably nowhere near the highs. The overall energy sector was down about 10 percent.

The markets recorded their advances because some stocks, like most of the airlines, made up for the poor performance of the energy stocks. Airline stocks normally do better with lower fuel costs so that’s easy to understand.

Looking elsewhere, the Russell 2000 index of small stocks was up only 3.5 percent. The S & P Midcap 400, a measurement of midsized companies was up about 9.7 percent.

The foreign markets were negative a few percentage points.

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If you are like most of us, you may own a little bit of everything which means that you probably did OK, just nothing spectacular.

The bond market was incredibly strong with bond yields actually falling.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell to about 2.1 percent, which was down from almost a 3 percent yield.

People who buy certificates of deposit and that sort of thing were finding that as usual they couldn’t make much money. As a matter of fact with inflation, most of those returns were negative.

For instance if you made a return of 1 percent and inflation was 2 percent, you did get your money back, but you lost buying power.

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I have to laugh. Most people who manage OPMs — other people’s money — worried all year about the stock market declining. It didn’t. Most of those people also worried that interest rates would go up. They didn’t.

As an investor, except for a couple of months in 2014, you just opened your statements and voila, you had more money. I mean this is all pretty easy isn’t it?

The bull market has run for about six years. The correction or bear market we have all been worried about, has not materialized.

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But one thing about most of the investors I know, they have not, nor are they interested in, increasing their risk.

Most investors are pretty smart. They know that they can make stock market returns by simply buying the appropriate index. If the market goes up 25 percent they will probably make 25 percent.

The problem with that is when the market goes down 25 percent, they lose 25 percent.

Most investors I know are very emotional about their money. Their money is like having a child; they don’t want anything to happen to it. They are not willing to put their money child to much risk.

That’s kind of an over simplification but that is how I look at it.

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By the way, a lot of my column is my take on things, my opinion, if you will. I don’t know any more than anyone else but I am “mature,” meaning I’ve been around for awhile.

Also the numbers I use are pretty close, but I get my info from a whole bunch of sources so they could be off a little.

I wish I could tell you what to do going forward, but I can’t. No one actually knows.

What I like is simple. Hold a diversified portfolio for investment.

Many years ago I saw a quote from someone that said: “If you have some stocks, some bonds, and some cash, you can survive about anything.”

Historically that has been true. I like diversified accounts. A little here, a little there, not over-diversified but diversified none the less.

Good luck this year.

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My wife was on a trip recently, and when she got home, she bounded into the Man Cave. She asked me what I had been up to while she was gone.

I told her that I had been on the gin and tonic diet. She raised that eyebrow and I told her that I had lost 5 days.

She doesn’t think I am funny.

Howie Pentony is a Saxonburg client portfolio manager.