EmailIt is the final day of the fourth quarter, meaning it is also the last day of the year. The way things stand now, the quarter and the year are set to end with a whimper.
Today is the fiscal cliff deadline and there is still no deal.
Negotiations continue. An eleventh-hour deal remains possible, but clearly, there won't be any grand bargain announced today.
The S&P futures are up 11 points this morning, yet they are still trading slightly below fair value. That means the cash market is on course for a lower start and possibly a sixth straight losing session.
The headlines out of Washington could alter that course -- and there will likely be a lot of headlines.
The early headline, though, is that little seems to have changed in Washington since the election. Partisanship is alive and well.
Something might be cobbled together today that has the semblance of being a compromise patch, yet the fiscal reform debate is destined to carry over to 2013. Complicating matters is that the debate will be taken up by a new Congress that will be sworn in January 3. Of course, the same congressional leaders will still be steering the debate.
Political uncertainty, therefore, will not be eliminated when the ball drops in Times Square tonight since it is apparent already that our political leaders in Washington continue to drop the ball.
In spite of it all, 2012 is going to go down in the record books as a good year for the stock market. The S&P 500 is up 11.5% year-to-date, excluding dividends. There is nothing wimpy about that.
