A whoppingly good but volatile first-half of 2013

By Dian Vujovich

Well, what’s an investor to do? Gold has hit  its lowest  levels in what feels like forever, both bond yields and equity performance promises are as jumpy as a cat in a room full of rockers and everyone is wondering whether the ole “Sell in May and go away” adage really should have been heeded. Why it’s enough to make a day trader nuts.

Fortunately most of us aren’t day traders.

So for the medium- to long-term investor, that would be people who aren’t reacting every single hour of every single trading day to what’s happening on Wall Street, worrying about what the second half of the year is going to bring isn’t really worth your time.

What is worth considering is a half-year review of your portfolio holdings to see how and if they -and your returns—match up with what’s going on in your life.

Louie Navellier’s July 1 MarketMail summed the first half performance of this year up nicely: In it he wrote that the Dow rose 13.8 percent during the first six months of 2013, NASDAQ was up 12.7 percent and the S&P 500 up 12.6 percent—that index’s best performance since 1999.

Remember 1999, Clinton, all the dot.com hoopla and the year-end  Y2K much to do about nothing worry?

Well let me suggest that all non-day traders tear a page from those Y2K days and not worry too much about what the last half of 2013 will bring.

Unless, of course, you’ll need your money soon and can’t deal with the heat market volatility kicks off. In that case, taking money off the table has never left anyone broke. Plus, the double-digit returns the first half of this year the indices have reported are hugely respectable.

As for what’s going to happen from now through December, the pros say to expect a volatile market with a clear direction in it as difficult to find as a compromise in Congress.

Where ever you stand, happy second half. And a very happy July 2^nd.  It was, after all, on that day in 1776 that the Continental Congress actually voted for independence. I like our independence and know you do too. Even if It sometimes comes with volatility.