This is when I really hate it, when someone tells me, “My sister and husband sold in 2009 and never got back in.” It actually makes me sad.

Boys and girls, the Standard and Poor’s 500 total return was up almost 32 percent in 2019. Now, you and I know that not many people made that return. Sure “some” of their portfolio may have performed like that, but most people use some sort of Asset Allocation which means they may have had money in assets that were either lower risk, bonds for instance, or other investments that did not return 32 percent.

If you practice an asset allocation where you were 60 percent or 70 percent in stocks then perhaps you made around 20 percent. If you did, that is a great return! Be happy.

My basic line over the years is that if you can make “fair and reasonable rates of return” then be happy.

The stock market historically makes 9 percent to 10 percent. If you can make 6 or 7 and sleep at night, then that is probably good number. I hear all the time, “I don’t want to lose a lot of money.” Nobody does, but you get the idea.

I’m not going to talk a lot of numbers and just confuse you. I am going to try to explain some things and perhaps give you some comfort going forward.

I think this is really interesting. All through 2019 investors sold billions and billions of dollars of stocks, and bought bonds! That is not the way it is supposed to work.

In my career stretching back a few years, most people got MORE enthusiastic when the market was rising, and wanted to ADD to it, not sell.

I have no clue what selling in 2019 means. None of the stock market people I know have much to say about it. I mean, some people could be saying that the markets are expensive and we need to shut it down a little. We just don’t know why some have been selling.

Historically, years when the market has done well it has not necessarily led to lower returns the next years.

Markets, as I’ve always said, do what they do. I remember back in 2009 market pundits were saying, “Well we won’t have those 9 percent returns for a long time. This has really damaged the market and it will take a long time to recover.”

So much for the wisdom then. The markets went on to make great, if not spectacular, advances, thank you very much.

No one knows. I keep saying that — and you and might tire of it — but it is the truth. People like me exist, in my view, to try to make sure that investors don’t do silly things and then we hold their hands. Under stress, everyone makes poor decisions. You need people like me who have been around for a while to help keep you calm.

Again, historically, if you bought the Dow Jones Industrial Average 120 years ago it has been about impossible to lose money if you did not sell. Unfortunately we do not know what is going to happen in the future. Maybe all these things blow up, who knows.

As an investor I just try to adapt to what is happening. I think it was Marty Zweig who said, “If the market is going down, then it will probably continue to go down. If it is going up, then it will probably continue to go up.” It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

There is no sense in trying to outguess what is going to happen.

Generally markets do well when interest rates are low, inflation is under control, and corporate profits are expanding. We seem to have those three conditions right now and perhaps the markets continue to do OK.

Unless there are things out there that we cannot see right now, geopolitical, or whatever it seems to me that we could, again, do OK. It is the unknown that is the issue.

The wife came into the man cave the other night and I told her that my friend Louie was getting a divorce. Louie told me that he was getting sick and tired of his wife hanging out at bars and such every night and not getting home until the wee hours of the morning. I asked him why she was doing that? He said, “She is looking for me!” The wife did not think that was funny.

Howie Pentony is a Portersville client portfolio manager.