Starting Gate Harbinger? Does market performance early in the calendar year portend anything about expectations for the full year? Not so much … 2014 checks in at -0.09% through 1/10/2014, a path to high single digit returns for this year?

There’s some discussion that the market trends during the early part of January can be an indication of what to expect from the rest of the year.

Here’s a look at a plot of the market performance from January 1st through the 10th versus the year-end results from 1991-2013. There’s a lot of scatter and the most that can be said is that there does appear to be a “general tendency.”

2014? On 1/10/2014, we were at -0.09% … suggesting high single digits for the year according to this. But we’ve seen anywhere from -20% to +30%.

Pick good stocks when they’re on sale. Rinse. Repeat.