What I got right – and wrong – in my daily e-mails in 2024

1) As we kick off 2025, today I'll review some of the advice I gave to my readers over the roughly 240 daily e-mails I wrote last year... and tomorrow I'll share my 2025 outlook.

Overall, the most important thing I got right was staying optimistic on stocks last year.

For some context, longtime readers will recall that I turned bullish in late 2022 as the market bottomed and that I've remained optimistic ever since – not just through 2023 (that was easy – it was the consensus view) but also through 2024 (which was much harder, as it became more and more contrarian).

Back in late 2022, as the markets were collapsing, I didn't run for the hills...

Being the contrarian that I am – following the legendary Warren Buffett's famous maxim of being "fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful" – I turned bullish.

In my October 12, 2022 e-mail, I pointed out that "though most people fail to understand this, declining stock prices are good news for long-term investors." I also shared an excerpt from Buffett's 1997 letter to Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) shareholders explaining why this is the case:

If you plan to eat hamburgers throughout your life and are not a cattle producer, should you wish for higher or lower prices for beef?

Likewise, if you are going to buy a car from time to time but are not an auto manufacturer, should you prefer higher or lower car prices?

These questions, of course, answer themselves. But now for the final exam: If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period?

As Buffett continued, "Many investors get this one wrong":

Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the "hamburgers" they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.

In particular, I was bullish on the stocks of the beaten-down tech giants – especially the most hated one of all, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms (META).

Meta has been my favorite stock ever since I pounded the table on it in six consecutive e-mails from October 31 through November 7 back in 2022, when it was around $90 per share (you can see the summary in my March 30, 2023 e-mail).

Even after META shares soared during 2023 to close around $350, I stayed bullish... and they closed 2024 at $585.51 – up more than 500% in total since I wrote those e-mails in 2022. In the chart below, you can see the steady move higher:

The story for the market as a whole, while certainly not so extreme, was similar...

Just take a look at the S&P 500's move last year:

For 2024, the S&P 500 rose 23%, hit 57 record closes, and posted its best back-to-back years since 1997 and 1998 – as you can see in the below chart from this recent Wall Street Journal article: Stocks Cap Best Two Years in a Quarter-Century (I added the red circles):

2) I also nailed the huge decline in inflation (after, in fairness, not seeing the big run-up). Back on August 11, 2022, with the previous month's inflation at 8.5% – having peaked in June at 9.1% – I wrote, "it's clear that inflation is on its way down."

Once it declined sharply to the 3% to 4% range a year and a half ago, I have said again and again "that inflation will not be an issue going forward." It has even been a little lower than I expected, with the latest report in November coming in at 2.7%. Take a look at this five-year chart from Trading Economics:

3) Regarding interest rates, I correctly saw that the U.S. Federal Reserve would start cutting interest rates, which it did in September. And I have (so far) been right that the aggressiveness of the cuts has been less than the consensus expectation because (as I predicted) the economy has remained remarkably strong.

The economy has been so strong that benchmark U.S. Treasury yields have risen since the Fed started cutting rates, which few expected. Take a look at this chart of the 10-year Treasury yield from the same WSJ article above:

4) Meanwhile, I will confess to completely missing bitcoin's big move in 2024. Take a look at this chart of the price of bitcoin last year:

That said, this doesn't bother me any more than, say, "missing" cocoa, which did even better than bitcoin – its prices nearly tripled last year, as you can see in this chart from Trading Economics:

I focus on investing, not speculating...

5) Lastly, while I don't recommend that most investors short stocks, nearly all of the ones I warned my readers to avoid did poorly, if not outright collapsed: Container Store (TCS) (bankrupt), Cassava Sciences (SAVA), Icahn Enterprises (IEP), Super Micro Computer (SMCI), Boeing (BA), and India's Adani Group.

As for my "Dirty Dozen" stocks to avoid that I named three years ago in my January 4, 2022 e-mail, in my first e-mail in 2024 on January 2, I wrote: "I continue to recommend avoiding the remaining 10 stocks on this list."

Note that I no longer show GameStop (GME), which I removed on March 23, 2023 at $22.58 per share... and Trump Media & Technology (DJT) (formerly Digital World Acquisition with the ticker DWAC), which I removed on April 14, 2023 at $13.12 per share – so I've renamed this group the "Terrible 10."

The below table shows that, as a group, these stocks have continued to be stinkers:

I'll repeat what I said last year: I continue to recommend avoiding the remaining 10 stocks on this list.

As I said, tomorrow I'll share my outlook for 2025 – so stay tuned!

Best regards,

Whitney

P.S. I welcome your feedback – send me an e-mail by clicking here.