Source: Investopedia
So far in 2013, we’ve seen the market basically tread water. After the huge fiscal cliff deal inspired buying in the first trading day of the year, the markets have drifted lower, and we are right about where we were when we started the year. Now, if we step back a bit and look at what’s happened to stocks over the past six months, we see that stocks have enjoyed a very nice bullish run.The broad measure of the biggest stocks in the domestic market, the S&P 500 index, has delivered a total return of 9.5% over the past half year (from July 11, 2012 through Jan. 11, 2013). That’s very strong performance for a major average, and if you’ve been invested in the biggest winners in the index — e.g., First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) +125.5%, Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) ...