Shall we ignore week 1 and start 2016 over again?
Oh, what japes! And that was only the first week back at work this year! But did we actually learn anything useful from the first five days of trading? Are there any nuggets we can cling on to that provide any useful money-making opportunities or, at least, stop us "doing our conkers"?
Possibly. But has anyone come out of week one with any credit or stood out as a visionary amid all the chaos? Not that I can see.
The chartists, of course, were having a field day, spouting a high degree of jibber-jabber -- sorry I meant technical analysis -- that confirmed that we are almost certainly doomed to a negative market performance in 2016. If I hear one more technical analyst telling me about the importance of the first day and first week of trading for the full year's move, I think I'm going to grab their candlestick and put it somewhere pretty uncomfortable. It just makes no sense to write off the rest of the year on such flimsy evidence.
That said, there's going to be a few careers cut short in their prime if the rout of last week continues. Let's face it: After last year's pathetic performance of the broader hedge fund industry, where all indications are that the industry again lost money, it's going to be a tad tricky for most of them to justify charging anything let alone the ludicrously high "two and twenty" average fee structure. Anyone else out there feel sorry for the industry that says it is being forced into herd-like long equity positions because of central banks and being unable to execute trades due to the algorithms? No, I thought not.
What about the analysts, how are they doing? Not so great. A couple of examples spring to mind. First, in a week that saw one of the world's most highly owned stocks -- Apple -- get a kicking, I revisited my Reuters system to see how the analysts stood on the stock. As usual there wasn't one seller to be found. Not one out of circa 50 analysts. Most were Strong Buyers or Buyers with one or two Neutrals thrown in for good measure. So not one piece of Wall Street research had called the stock lower. And people pay for this stuff.
Even more of a waste of time was the sell side analyst who I saw went from Hold to Buy on a stock and changed the price target from 210p to 200p. The stock itself is trading circa 140p and has been around there for some time. So you're telling me he or she previously had it worth 50 percent more than it is currently trading and only had it as a Hold. What on earth is the point?
It was also a bad week for regulators. What more can be said that hasn't already about the shambolic Chinese authorities? Still, now they've sorted out the little hiccup on the circuit breakers, maybe we can just concentrate on the bonkers valuations on the Chinese markets. Who needs Macau when you've got the Shanghai Composite?
Perhaps the group who had the worst week were the oil longs. From Shell's CEO, Ben Van Beurden, to the biggest producers in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it was a week to forget as the oil rout just went on and on. I keep hearing that we are going to get a second half of 2016 bounce-back to over $60 a barrel and yet that now means WTI and Brent have to virtually double! Double! That's one hell of a call.
In the week that Saudi Arabia announced it was looking into a part-privatisation of oil company Aramco, I couldn't help thinking that the Middle Eastern oil superpower clearly doesn't buy into the massive bounce story. You don't talk about offloading part of your prize asset if you think prices are about to surge.
So that's the technicians, the hedges, the analysts and the commodity players amongst others who had a bad week. Anyone else need a bit of a kicking? Oh yes, me.
You see I said on CNBC's SquawkBox on Friday that I was sure the equity market would rally if we got a strong non-farm payroll figure. We subsequently got the good number but that DJIA et al slumped by the close. Silly me. I got in a muddle thinking that good economic numbers would be soothing to a market fraught with uncertainty. I clearly forgot markets are more afraid of a rate hike Stateside than a slowing US. Fool!
When I was a trader it was always good to reset the P&L to zero at the start of a new year, shall we just pretend that this year hasn't started yet and restart it this week?
Steve Sedgwick is an anchor on SquawkBox Europe, you can follow him on @steve_sedgwick