A Bit on the "January Effect"

Well it used to be that in January, after all the tax selling of the previous December, the month was a "bounce" and...everybody looked forward to it. It seems though, that this year, 2013, the "bounce" lasted all of 48 hours. I guess I understand..with the sale of the NYSE, and the layoffs of the investment pros on Wall Street, probably caused by lower earnings due to errors of judgement of the higher ups...it certainly might be a lean year...and also, it was not pretty dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which has tested the old rule never to rebuild in a flood plain, or at least never rebuild with your own money...asking for full federal help is the exception...and of course it is OK to borrow for foreign wars, but that is verboten for any social need.... It has also gotten ugly for the Wall Street pundits, who are trying to make sense of it all...and in reviewing the retail sales numbers last week. trashed higher end TIF, Tiffanys, for selling too high end, and not realizing that the rich do not have the money any more...and trashing JCP, J.C. Penney and the middle class market... for their efforts to the forget the constant sales, and go with the "Straight Deal" which is a transformation that takes time..which Wall Street pundits do not have...and then of course the lower end, "Dollar Store" which was trashed because even they did not have the traffic Wall Street Pundits wanted...so the question remains where all the traffic and sales went...and ya...retail theft was up...so some were doin the best they could to move some merchandise.... The first quarter of 2013 could be pretty ugly...stay tuned.