BUMPY OR FLAT?

If there's a Santa Clause rally or absence thereof investors anticipate each year, look no further than January for what's called by many the January effect. In short, it's: so goes the first month of the year, so goes the rest of it.

Flat is the term being used to describe 2015, not an uncommon description since the last flat year for stocks was 2011. Rehashing all the possible market headwinds investors face is a bit like trying to figure out a cauldron of witch's brew. No one is quite sure what the ingredients are and when or if the side effects will appear.

The list one could conjure is long and longer. China, divergence-convergence, the dollar, the Fed, the yield curve, recession, global instability, energy, consumers, manufacturing, toss in whatever you want. You probably won't be too far amiss.

Like any addictive substance the market has it's own symptoms. After the consecutive up years, flat markets are a kind of withdrawal. Is this the start of something more serious? And like the Santa Claus rally the January effect symbolizes a form of investor optimism. Call it hope, sort of a road map of what's ahead. Like three-quarters time, the direction January takes is suppose to be accurate 75 percent of the time.

Here's an interesting read on the matter from MarketWatch as we move into next week. Bumpy or flat, it is what's it's going to be. Your job, as always, should you choose to ride along, is to figure out which. Maybe you're like my new puppy flying around the place like a Nascar driver. Every morning he wakes up ready to play, today, centerfield.

Everything he does is all-in, including sleeping. Not many of us can say that. The globe turned out not to be flat. And so too maybe 2016 won't be either.

Stocks could get a boost next week from the so-called "January effect," when stocks that were sold