As Wall Street’s best year in more than 15 draws to a close, few are expecting a repeat performance in 2014, though traders have plenty of reasons to feel optimistic.

SOURCE: Big year ends with Wall Street hopeful for 2014: Fidelity.

I have a fair share of stocks in my retirement portfolio and have seen them go up quite a bit this year. It almost reminds me of the year 1998 when I started thinking about retiring. It is good news to see stocks going up especially since the Feds have bond interest rates stuck at 0% for so long.

But then I look at this year from a political view and things couldn’t have been worse. Total gridlock and the total “do-nothingness” congress. How can these two things occur in the same year? Of course my hero Will Rogers  had already told me but I failed to listen I guess.

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for. — Will Rogers

In fact he told me even more bluntly and I am paraphrasing because I can’t find the quote right now

The best thing congress can do for the country is take a two-week vacation.

Those yahoos spend more time at home than they did in Washington this year. Maybe that in financial terms is a good thing. But I do kind of wish they would have stayed around long enough to do a little something for the guy out of work and struggling to feed his family.