Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

> I just got an email from someone who runs a stock market advisory
> service (makes recommendations to clients on whether to buy or
> short the stock market). The email said he is long now, but
> wanted to know if the market crashes when it would make a low.

> I think everyone can draw the appropriate conclusions.

Tell him 85 days, 9 hours, 43 minutes, 28 seconds later. Guaranteed.

I did give him a day, but that's only based on his (and it seems like everyone else's belief that this might be "like" 1929 or 1987). And that was after telling him multiple times that it's not. So it isn't going to crash in the same way and there is no reasonable estimate of a date for a low. This is like 1929, 1930, and 1937 all rolled into one. Interest rates have been at "depression-era" levels for 9 years, so it can't be like 1929 and certainly not 1987. But everyone who makes a comparison keeps telling me it's like 1929 and 1987. It's not.

[Higgenbotham]

This is in an e-mail just received from Zack's.

Profit from the Pros

Stocks Take A Breather, But Are Poised For More Gains

How do they know? Did they know stocks were going to take a "breather"?

The scary thing is I'm talking about people who are paid to advise others about what to do with their money and these advisers are all clueless. Of course, John has been saying that for years. But it's times like this where it becomes more obvious - and more dangerous.

[FishbellykanakaDude]

> I just got an email from someone who runs a stock market advisory
> service (makes recommendations to clients on whether to buy or
> short the stock market). The email said he is long now, but
> wanted to know if the market crashes when it would make a low.

> I think everyone can draw the appropriate conclusions.

Tell him 85 days, 9 hours, 43 minutes, 28 seconds later. Guaranteed.

..you're off by 12 minutes and 14 seconds.

I'm not sure if you're late or early, though.

Exactitude within the margin of error is EVERYTHING! We must be precise, don'tcha know. Must be the German in me. Damn you Uncle Albert!


Aloha nui, a me hoʻonoke ʻaka! (..and keep on laughing!) <shaka!>

[John]

Here's a joke from the 1950s:

> Stock broker: In the 1920s, they used to believe that stocks would
> just go up and up and up

> Client: Really? What do we believe now?

Today, of course, most people think that this is a meaningless pair of
random sentences. They don't even know that it's a joke.

[Higgenbotham]

He knows what he's doing in that regard. He's not a timer but if you ask 15 timers that you know when the next low will be and take the average you'll be pretty close. And if he's close enough for horse shoes or hand grenades he'll keep his clients and his income stream.

But the larger question is why does he have clients long today when he's a paid adviser and should have known better. Also, his email is telling in that the advisory community may be worried about a possible crash, but they are long. Those are some of the necessary ingredients for a panic.

[Higgenbotham]

Which is why when my broker said there might be a bounce at 2782-84 I said "be careful" and it cut right through it.

[FishbellykanakaDude]

Here's a joke from the 1950s:

> Stock broker: In the 1920s, they used to believe that stocks would
> just go up and up and up

> Client: Really? What do we believe now?

Today, of course, most people think that this is a meaningless pair of
random sentences. They don't even know that it's a joke.

Perhaps a "severe narrowing of perspective" is yet another "metric" by which to measure a society's "closeness" to "generational crisis" conditions?

Perhaps I'm just weird, and/or old, as I first see anything said to me as attempted humor, and then quickly get around to "hearing" it as a serious statement, after assessing it for it's humor value.

The current quantity of Educationally Induced historical myopia is astounding (at least in the US).


Nā mahalo for bein' there, Johno,.. the inoculation to "the world" that the GD site provides is quite valuable.

Aloha nō īa ʻoe, dude! <shaka nui!>

[Higgenbotham]

Perhaps a "severe narrowing of perspective" is yet another "metric" by which to measure a society's "closeness" to "generational crisis" conditions?

John published this a month before the 2008 crash:

August 1, 2008

CNBC's Jim Cramer announces that the market has hit bottom.

Pushing toy stuffed bears through a meat slicer, the screaming, peripatetic CNBC anchor Jim Cramer declared that he "had unbelievable guts to call a bottom," and said:

"I am indeed sticking my neck out right here, right now, declaring emphatically that I believe the market will not revisit the panicked lows it hit on July 15. and I think anyone out there who’s waiting for that low to be breached is in for a big disappointment and [they’re] missing a great deal of upside.

Stop waiting, [and] buy the next dip because I think it might be the last big one."

The first thing to note is that the reasons he gives are all based on data for the last few days. That data could all change in the next few days. People like Cramer believe that "history always begins this morning," and that's why they always get things wrong.

The analysis by Oppenheimer's Meredith Whitney predicting imminent meltdown of over 25 financial institutions at least uses 6-12 months of data.

And the analyses that I've been posting on this web site since 2003 all use decades of data. That's why they always turn out right.

(See "List of major Generational Dynamics predictions" for more information about these predictions.)

But for Cramer, a couple of days is all you need.

[John]

Wow! You have a good memory. I didn't remember that at all.

** CNBC's Jim Cramer announces that the market has hit bottom. (01-Aug-2008)
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... m#e080801b

[Higgenbotham]

The confirmation that brokers, traders, and advisers may be wrong-footed keeps coming into my mailbox.

Both of the people described below are sober individuals and never rah-rah bulls. They normally objectively look at both sides.

After the close, I received an email from a trader who traded in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange S&P 500 pit back in the day. His email says he didn't see the turn-down today coming. I had justified the bear case to him over the weekend, but apparently he didn't believe it.

A bit before that, I received something from a money manager in New York. Normally what I receive is a warning that the market is too high, but not lately. What I've been receiving lately (unfortunately I can't remember for how long) is that this is "like 1927" (implying therefore the bull has 2 more years to run). Today's message was consistent with that, even after today's reversal was evident.

While nothing is for sure, it seems to be confirmed once again that very few are looking down.