Thursday, January 29, 2009

Poll closed - bulls are scarce

As you can see on the right, the results of the reader poll are in. The majority category was "pogo stick" meaning lots of volatility with no real trend over the next six months.

The middle two were a little and a lot lower. But add them together and more than 2/3 of all respondents think the market is going at least a little lower.

Now combine that with the lowest vote-getting category was "bull starting" and if this were an actual valid survey, I might just jump on my contrarian horse to ring the bell (or is that grab the ring on the carousel?).

I caution everyone that this is far from a valid survey and I have to assume that anyone reading a blog that can only be found via a link in the bio of my column has to have a better than average grasp on the markets and risk.

But now you know what 140 of your fellow readers are thinking and it could not hurt.

4 comments:

jpmist said...

So, us voters being the retail hoi polloi, wouldn't this poll be a contrary indicator?

Assuming the market tends to defy consensus expectations we can then expect a massive rally soon. I can't wait. . .

Michael Kahn said...

You missed the part where I said that readers of this blog are more likely to be above average in market savvy. The reason is that is took dedication to even find the blog in the first place.

hoi polloi - not!

hoi pol⋅loi (noun) - the common people; the masses (often preceded by the).

jpmist said...

Perhaps, but I'm a dentist from Atlanta, you can't get more "retail" than that. (grin)

Besides, the savvy high rollers actually pay for your insights via your newsletter. It'd be interesting to see what their poll looks like.

Unknown said...

With all due respect to Michael Kahn, truly savvy high rollers, and even low rollers, do their own homework and don't hire a proxy to take the exam!