New Year – and they’re off and running

Historically speaking, thanks to Rob Hanna's Quantitative Edges, when the S&P 500 closes lower on the final two trading days of a year, the ideal trade is to buy at the close on Dec 31. This came into fruition today as the IWM was the top performing U.S. average up 1.55%. Should one have the bravery to invest 100% in the TNA a 4.65% return was in your coffers.

Some individual standouts: MCP continued the China rare earth materials sector momentum from December up 15.5% along with REMX 6.8% and REE 6.1%. Metals Fabricator GTLS is watched by Slope of Hope's Tim Knight up 7.9%.

Every position in one's portfolio should be up at least 1% today otherwise it's a candiate for a sell for tomorrow. Nasdaq big-cappers AAPL and AMZN were up 2% with PCLN up 3.6%, GOOG 1.7%, and NFLX 1.5%.

I went with the casy playbook as Industrials Metals and Material's WLT and coal's JOYG were both up 2%. A better play in the same sector was Angie's ANR up 2.4%.

While I slightly outperformed the S&P's material sector fund XME up 1.9%, the top coal performers were ICO 5.6% and PCX 5.3%.

Underperformers were gold, silver, and energy services all down .5% although oil refiners matched the industry averages with VLO up 2.7%, CVI up 2.1%.

On December 30, the Investor Business Daily 85/85 list had CLF as their #1 stock for the week and being in the Industrial Metals sector it was up 4.9%.

Casinos also outperformed as WYNN 4.9% and MGM 3.57% were the standouts. WYNN needs to be added to the watchlist for possible further upside.