After a turbulent 2020, it finally looks promising that by the end of this year Donald will just be a duck again and Corona just a beer. And, of course, that our Penta strategies could do even better than they have in the past.

After an amazingly wild ride to all-time highs of Bitcoin in the first week of January, the crypto markets eased back quite a bit. 

President-elect Biden laid out his $1.9 trillion economic stimulus plan the week before his inauguration and coronavirus infections continued to rise around the world. Meanwhile the distribution of vaccines continued to face logistical issues. All of this led to many ups and downs in the markets. 

Volatility exploded as small investors wreaked havoc in heavily shorted companies. A massive short squeeze was provoked in GameStop, whose stock price rose from $65 to $483. A movement of retail investors triggered by social media influencers bought up this heavily shorted stock on a massive scale, forcing hedge funds that had been betting on falling prices to cover billions in losses. Interestingly, something very similar happened late last week when retail investors pumped up the cryptocurrency Ripple by 180%.

After Apple, Facebook, Tesla, and Microsoft all announced better-than-expected results, stock prices mostly fell because, well, that expectation was seemingly already priced into the shares.  

So after a wild January, the S&P 500 ended at -1.1% and the MSCI World Index at -1.0%. 20-year bonds and gold fell -3.6% and -3.2%, respectively.

Our strategies also took a little hit with CryptoMax at -2.0% and Progressive at -1.4%. Just Universal steadily weathered the storm at +0.2%.

So, what’s next? Will the stock market rise again? Will bitcoin skyrocket? Is there a future in bonds? Will gold save us all? No one knows…

But you can be sure, that I will continue to stick to the strategies that performed well in the past years while always keeping an eye on new developments.

Stay happy, healthy and wealthy!

Omar