Content provided by Marc Pfeffer, CLS Portfolio Manager

According to Wikipedia, “Optimism is a mental attitude or world view that interprets situations and events as being best (optimized), meaning that in some way for factors that may not be fully comprehended, the present moment is in an optimum state.”

The broad concept goes on further but I will stop there for now. As we close out 2013, it seems to me that this is an appropriate word to describe the outlook for the market and the economy as we head in 2014. When was the last time we could say that since 2008?

It seems like every day now we hit new closing highs for stocks, and the major complaint we have is that we didn’t make enough since bonds returned us nothing and in many cases lost us money so our portfolios were up less than the overall market. Since we are optimistic about 2014, many are looking for the same outcome. That optimism may change for (as stated above) factors that may not be fully comprehended yet.

At CLS, we continue to recommend investors stay the course and look at bonds (and in 2013 commodities and emerging markets) as important asset classes to own in portfolios. Let’s hope the optimism continues, but if there are some bumps in the road…….are you prepared? We are!

0049-CLS-1/9/2014