Weekly Market Commentary 01/08/2016

Talk about a tumultuous start to 2016, the opening week has been filled with enough bombast to jangle the nerves of the most placid bystander, particularly one with a stock portfolio. For a change the headline tumult is not about politics, although there will be more than enough bombastic rhetoric coming from the campaign trail in coming months. Rather, the impulse is emanating from overseas, including a freefall in the Chinese stock market that rattled investors and helped send stock prices, as measured by the S&P 500 index, to their worst opening week start to a year ever recorded.