I told someone the other day that I was exactly right about the 2011 stock market; the problem is I was thinking about the wrong country.

Early in the year, around February I think, I did not like the way the world and local economic situations were shaping up. If you remember the markets did well early, I just thought that it was a matter of time before the markets corrected downward.

I thought that the markets could be down 20 percent, and the deeper we got into the year, the more I believed it. Wrong.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index of large companies was bouncing around 1350 until late July. Then the market did indeed correct down to about 1100 around which was right at 20 percent; down 10 percent for the year but 20 percent from the high, which is why I tell everyone never to measure from the high.

I thought “Here we go.” Wrong again.

We ended up 2011 almost exactly even. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 6 percent, but it contains only 30 stocks so is not a good measurement of the broad markets.

I must have been confused with Mexico, Sweden and South Korea, which were all down 20 percent or more.

You keep hearing this, but markets do climb walls of worry and surprise even people like me.

In the U.S., the Nasdaq Composite was down about 2 percent, the Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks was down 5.5 percent and the S&P Midcap index was down 3.1 percent.

Internationally, the Dow Jones Global index, not including the U.S., was down 16.3 percent. This is one of the times that being well diversified hurt performance.

If you are disappointed with 2011, don’t be. I think we were fortunate.

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Looking at commodities, the DJ-UBS commodity index was down more than 13 percent, which generally is good for you and me. Crude oil was up more than 8 percent; natural gas was down 32 percent and recently hit a two-year low.

Gold ended around $1,565 per ounce, which was an increase of about 10 percent for the year.

Since the end of September, many commodities have fallen in price. Coffee, sugar, hogs, corn and soybeans dropped in price, which is good for those of us who like to eat. Cattle have been fighting us and remains at or near early year prices.

That does not surprise me. I remember last year that I commented about farmers slaughtering their herds because they could not make a profit and that action might lead to higher prices and apparently it has.

You just don’t go out and rebuild herds overnight.

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Every year I try to remind you to make sure you have done a couple of things. If you divorced or lost a spouse or significant other, remember to change the beneficiaries. I could tell you the story about the man who got a divorce, remarried and when he died, his ex got the life insurance and pension proceeds because he forgot to change beneficiaries.

Something else you might consider, if you do not have syndicate, put one together. A syndicate in the financial world is when a group of firms get together to accomplish a goal, normally an offering of stock when a company goes public.

What you should have is your own little syndicate of people with a common goal, you. A CPA, an attorney, your executor of your estate, everyone needs to be on the same page.

Once a year, chat with them and make sure you are on the right track, and that each one of them knows what you are trying to accomplish. I assure you that doing just that will make you a much happier camper.

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I would not be surprised to see our government limit future pension contributions to 401Ks, Individual Retirement Accounts and the like. That has the effect of increasing taxes without a tax increase.

If you are putting $20,000 in your 401-K and that maximum is reduced to $10,000 maximum then you begin paying taxes on the $10,000 which you could not contribute. You might consider doing the best you can with contributions this year.

No guarantees, it’s just what I think.

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I was reading the paper the other night, and I told my wife that I sure did not want to die like the guy in the newspaper story. She said “How did he die?”

I said, “With all the passengers in his car screaming and yelling.”

She doesn’t think I’m funny.

Howie Pentony is a Saxonburg client portfolio manager.