Happy New Year! This week I will review predictions I made for 2023. I wrote an essay about why stocks were still overvalued and why Microsoft and Apple stocks were especially vulnerable on January 2, 2023. I was so wrong as MSFT 0.00%↑ and AAPL 0.00%↑ stock gained 56.2% and 48.6% respectively in 2023. I was right on the relative strength for other big tech stocks as Facebook, Amazon and Tesla gained 194.1%, 80.9% and 101.7% respectively in 2023 after falling more than 50% in 2022!! Apple did have some disappointing earnings and experienced YoY decline in revenue but I supposed it was all priced in ;-). I was also wrong about the volatility. Except for the March SVB collapse, the volatility isn’t that high in 2023.
Investor sentiment was quite pessimistic when I made the prediction last year and that’s probably why I was wrong. Fast forward to today, I feel investors are in general cautiously optimistic for 2024 so I can’t really have a contrarian view lol. Namely, how do I have a contrarian view of a fairly neutral outlook? I do think there will be volatility since 2023 was too calm.
Although I had a bit of a pessimistic view last year, I still had 50% in equity so I did ride along with the bull market. I am glad I took the what-if-i-am-wrong approach in investing. Not being overconfident is an asset. I may sound like an idiot but I avoid taking extreme actions like selling all equity or buying stocks with margin, which spared me a lot of stress and kept me on track for my long-term goals. My portfolio return was not bad for 2023 and now I have a pretty balanced 60% equity / 40% treasury bills portfolio. I don’t plan to make any changes and will just sit back and see what the future brings for 2024.