From everyone at Investing Daily, I’d like to wish you and your loved ones a happy holiday season. As much time as we spend talking about money, it is the people we care about that matter the most. To that end, we hope the insight and advice we have provided this year has been helpful in living your life as you would like.

Every year brings its share of unexpected events. I need to look back no further than last year’s “look ahead” issue of Personal Finance to realize how tricky it can be to anticipate the major issues that will dictate stock market behavior. One year ago I wrote:

“Trump will prove to be more of a pragmatist than he has seemed to be up to this point, choosing to pick fights he knows he won’t lose to establish the culture of winning he so frequently cites.” I went on to say, “So any tax package passed this year also will need to provide an immediate economic benefit to ward off accusations of crony capitalism.”

Okay, so perhaps my take on 2017 didn’t pan out exactly the way I expected.

President Trump picked a lot of fights with Congress and doesn’t have as many wins as he would like to show for it. In addition, the immediate economic benefit of his tax bill was a hotly debated topic right up to the end.

Regardless, the stock market advanced for its ninth straight year.

[insert graphic of SPY past nine years]

Looking back over the past 12 months, I’m proud to report that we made many correct calls in 2017 resulting in solid results across all of our portfolios. We also got a few wrong, but overall we lived up to our mandate of giving profitable advice while keeping risk at a minimum.

We’re all set to accomplish that goal again this year. I asked our team of analysts to respond to three questions regarding their outlook for the financial markets in 2018. I will share their responses to each of those questions over the next three days, as follows:

• Tuesday: What major geopolitical event/circumstance do you expect to affect your coverage area the most in 2018?
• Wednesday: Which sectors/geographies do you believe will perform the best in 2018?
• Thursday: What would it take for the current bull market to finally come to an end in 2018?

I’m sure many of you have an opinion on each of these questions. I encourage you to share them with us in the ‘Stock Talk’ feature beneath each article. We’d like to know what you are thinking, and what we can in 2018 to help you achieve your goals.