re: Bears and bulls

Hard to be down on this market in the near term. RSI at 60 for a broader portion of S&P now shows those stocks are breaking out and it is no longer going to be the big seven carrying the market. CPI and PPI have improved. Payrolls are very strong. Tons of money being spent on construction, so industrials poised to breakout. The Russell, though still lagging the broader market, is now starting to make a move up, which is really positive.

The market is expensive by historical standards but we've been waiting on this recession for a year and a half too.

This thing is like a rocket ship. Is it time to start thinking about selling?

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Most of those clowns were poli board escapees.

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Shocker !!

I'm still on the sidelines. Will I regret it? Very possibly.

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This is how people get “frozen” in fear and never get back in the market after cashing out.

We have this surprise market run that every analyst says shouldn’t happen, and people keep “waiting” for it to go back down to get fully invested.

Who knows what happens next, but this is why you stay invested for the long term.

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Also the fact that the equities market has generally always rebounded BEFORE "the economy" does.

IIRC during the last several recessions, the broad equities market began it's rise out of the slump significantly before most other indicators/metrics signaled the end of the downturn.

So to add to your point, the market will probably begin its new "long term" ride up even though the news and other metrics will still say that the end of days is coming soon.

If you cashed out, you'll probably miss a huge chunk of the rebound if you're waiting for mainstream sentiment to flip before getting back in.

For retirement funds I see no reason to ever get out of stocks until you are getting close to retirement age.

If you are trading in a cash account, go for it, I guess. I've never been very good at timing it though. This is one of the reasons that I mostly buy stocks that pay dividends.

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I do feel that the powers that be put fear into the individual investor to get them to sell. Prices come down.

Institutions buy back in then small investors follow them back into market.

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Possibly. But it seems that a lot of hedge funds were also either short or at least behind the curve on being long and were heavy in cash too.

At least from what I’ve read on this board, quite a few of the bears here had talked themselves into a negative sentiment based on personal or political leanings. In my experience, those are typically unsound reasons to go long or short. But to each his own.

Although not based on my political views (I don’t discuss religion or politics at parties, and I don’t let either influence my investment decisions either ), I will admit that I let some PAG go with a 20% gain, based on the expectation that we would indeed see at least a mild recession and an automotive related stock wouldn’t prosper. Well… it’s up about 45% since I unloaded those shares. And Ferrari (RACE) is up about 65% since I sold it (but that one was a trade based on being assigned on some short puts). So the incredible resilience of this market has caught many of us off guard to varying degrees. But for those who actually went short =

I can’t bear the bullshite of the stock market anymore, so I’m buying vehicles from the printer of currency, Uncle Sam.