If you’re a stock trader, ETF trader, Forex… it doesn’t matter. it’s basically “trading 101″ that you need to have a trading plan for the new year. Now, in the past I have stated to my colleagues that if you get through the first or second month of the fourth quarter of a given year and have not completed a framework for the structure of how you want the next year to go it may already be too late to effectively plan for the beginning of next year. There are several reasons that I state this with the most obvious being that not all changes and new plans or ideas can be immediately implemented so if there isn’t enough lead time to get the framework for goals and plans in place you may be well into the first quarter before the structure of the new year is in place. Part of the slowdown in the lead time each year is due to the Holiday Season which is when many people are unavailable due to vacations or time off. It simply makes it more difficult to get some of the necessary things accomplished that are required to move forward with new plans but this is also a great time to sit back and review this year to see what changes we want to make going forward and how best to implement them.
What has been good for this year’s planning for next year is the fact that the presidential election is over so there is no uncertainty in this area. We can pretty much expect, from an economic standpoint, that the next four years will go about the same as the last four years which apparently for some reason is okay with slightly more than half of the voting population. Whether less than slightly half of the voting population agrees with this or not is another matter but at least we have an understanding of what we have done to ourselves for the next four years.
Having an understanding of what we can expect economically in the future is fine but essentially since we cannot control any of it we just need to stand back, look at the entire playing field and move forward in the best way that we can for ourselves regardless of what changes do or do not occur. The fiscal cliff issue has dominated much of the fourth quarter of this year which again is something that we cannot personally control we just need to be nimble, we need to understand the ramifications of the likely outcomes and plan going forward the best we can with the knowledge and situation that we have at the time. The first quarter of next year will very possibly be dominated by another government stalemate about the debt ceiling. Will our debt ceiling increase or not which may lead to the same or similar type of government infighting we have witnessed in the past over this issue.
Regardless of if you are a business owner, an hourly employee, self employed, out of work or retired you still need to plan for next year. The old sayings “Plan your work and work your plan” and “If you have no goals you’ll always reach them” are very true. What do you want the level of your assets to be a year from now versus what they are now? What do you want the gross and net profits of your company to be versus what they are now? What kind of employment do you want next year versus what you have now? Regardless of your situation you still need to plan this out. The sooner we can come up with a realistic and workable plan to achieve our goals the better off we will be going forward.