Up close, Georges Seurat's magnificent Sunday on La Grande Jatte is a mass of tiny dots -- small, seemingly random brush strokes of pure color. But take a step back, and a pleasant park scene suggests itself. Take a few more paces back, and the whole canvas comes alive. (Need a memory jog? It's the park painting featured in Masterpiece, the board game, and in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off -- it hangs in Chicago's Art Institute.) I may never have finished a college art history course, but even I can tell you that it's unabashed pointillism.
Modern-day here-and-now media coverage threatens to make us all pointillist investors. We watch the zigs and zags of our stocks, sometimes even subjecting ourselves to the constant stream of real-time information, ultimately in order to make the best big-picture decisions for our dollars. But seeing the long-term bigger picture can be very difficult. It may be most difficult at this time of year, as the calendar turns and every media company under the sun regales us with highlights of the year just past and predictions for the coming 12 months (it's only ever 12 months -- notice that?).
Most of this is all just dots!
The Motley Fool thinks long-term investors deserve better. We don't want to see dots, either -- we prefer to look at canvases. That's why we canvassed our team of writers for help in sketching out what the next decade will look like, not just the coming 12 months. We figure you can go other places to read about the year 2006 to your heart's content.
Fools that we are, then, we would like to present you this series, "New Year's 2016." Happy new decade!
New Year's 2016: Party Like It's 1996!
Before taking a leap of faith forward to 2016, let's see what 10 years back looked like.
New Year's 2016: How'd We Get Here?
A look at the trends of the past decade that got us to this point -- bubble burst, Iraq, PetroChinaExxon ...
New Year's 2016: Four Fabulous Fads
Today's passing fads are tomorrow's market dominators.
New Year's 2016: Four More Fabulous Fads
Another crop of current trends that could become future staples.
New Year's 2016: A Decade of Risks Awaits
A Fool looks at some of the biggest threats that our country, our economy, and our portfolios could face over the next decade.
New Year's 2016: The Best Stocks We Never Bought
Every investor faces regrets. Here are a few of our worst.
New Year's 2016: Where's Your Retirement?
How close will you be to the retirement of your dreams 10 years from now?
New Year's 2016: The Future Is Now
A decade ago, individual investors were just beginning to find their chops. Ten years from now, they'll be some of the shrewdest people on the Street.
New Year's 2016: Can You Retire in 2016?
A Fool seeks strategies to spend retirement living it up on the links, rather than toiling away at the drive-thru window.
Dead by 2016
Learn to spot the companies with little or no future left.
