I have to laugh. People will call me and say “I know the market has been bad this year.”

It has not been bad this year. It has not been good, but it is somewhere in between.

If you had asked me at the end of 2014 what I thought about 2015, I would have said that the markets stood a good chance of being down. Now, having said that, the year is not over. We could get trashed or we could rally some.

Here are the numbers so far as I write this on Wednesday.

The Dow Jones industrial average is up a little under 2 percent. The Standard and Poor’s 500 is up almost 3 percent. The small company stocks in the Russell 2000 are just about break even. The mid caps, a bump up in size, are up about 1.5 percent.

The big deal is the Nasdaq which is up over 7 percent. I like looking at the Wilshire 5000 index of most of the stocks traded in the U.S. It is up about 1.8 percent.

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Now, I said the markets are not bad; they are just not so good.

If you have a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds, mixed in with foreign investments, your account may not look so good. Why? Well the foreign markets have been mixed at best. Generally I’ll say down 2 percent.

Same deal with bonds. Some are up and some are down. We’ll call the bond market slightly down.

Also some of the sectors have been slammed. Basic materials are down about 7 percent. These numbers I use are all on average. Basic Materials are items like mining, chemicals, steel, aluminum and the like.

Utilities are down almost 7 percent, energy is down 11 percent. Most people own some of these stocks either individually or in their mutual funds so that may be hurting them and you.

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So what am I saying? I’m saying so far it is not a horror story, it is just not pretty. Personally I am glad we are not down 10 percent or 15 percent.

After the run we have had over the past several years, I am not disappointed in 2015 so far. If you own some stocks, some bonds, and have some cash, you are probably even to down a few percentage points for the year. That is not a bad thing in my view.

On the commodity side, orange juice is up 7 percent, cocoa is up 15 percent, the U.S. dollar is up 8 percent which is good if you travel.

On the downside is cotton down almost 4 percent, milk down 6 percent, gold is around $1,085 an ounce which is down around 8 percent. These numbers are all year to date of course.

The Mexican Peso is down almost 10 percent so travel to Mexico is cheaper. The Canadian dollar is down around 11 percent so you can travel either north or south.

Gasoline is down about 13 percent, corn down 14 percent, soybeans down 15 percent, and the same with cattle. Wheat is down almost 20 percent, and copper is off 21 percent.

The euro is down about 11.5 percent against the dollar so head to countries that use the euro.

My favorite item to watch is coffee and by some counts it is down almost 30 percent for the year. Natural gas is also down about 30. You should not be seeing much drilling going on.

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I like to look at trends to see if the trend is still in place. For instance, coffee still looks lower to me. Hogs are down about 25 percent for the year and appear headed lower. Sugar looks higher, gold and silver both lower, corn appears to have leveled off, orange juice looks higher. It is winter after all.

Of course, these directions are all just my opinion.

November is normally a decent month so we’ll hope for the best. Christmas is six weeks away if you are counting.

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My friend Louie and I were talking on the phone the other day and I hung up just as the wife came blowing into the Man Cave. She knew I was talking to Louie so she asked me how he was doing.

I told her that he said his wife found a piece of paper with the name Linda Lou on it and he told her it was the name of a horse he bet when he went to the races.

A couple of days later she came up to him and slapped him.

“What was that for?” he asked. She said, “Your horse called.”

She didn’t think that was funny.

Howie Pentony is a Portersville client portfolio manager.