Sunday, August 23, 2009

Here comes the hate

Every once in a while, when I get into a deep analytical slump like the one that plagues me now, I notice the tipping point when the cards and letters get nasty. Hate mail has picked up quite a bit this month, not so much here in the blog but from my Barron's Online column.

It is funny how the love mail is always low but that is the nature of the beast. People only write in to complain about something - why did you cancel my favorite TV show, how can you like the current administration, who killed JR?

What is telling for traders is the more they want to puke on their keyboards after making a big trade the more right they end up being. The same goes for hate mail. When it swells, I get a contrarian feeling.

Institutions are quite bullish right now and cash levels are quote low, despite what you may have heard from the pundits. Manipulated markets or not, it seems that the mob is formed.

1 comment:

Amalan said...

Michael,

only late last week I wanted to ask you if there was a spike in hate mail. And now I see a post about it! With every market move up, there is a counter force that gets exercised. From what was complete agreement with your prediction at the SP500 level of low 800s, it turned to tolerence with the lack of follow through in the predicted direction, then suspicion as the market continued to power up and the final stage of hate is upon us now.

My personal opinion is that both fundamentals and technicals mattered in the past - both have shown promise at different times, and both types of analysts have got it right and wrong at different times.

I believe fundamentals work over a longer term whereas technicals work in the shorter term, perhaps because of the importance of sentiment and its impact on shorter cycles than on longer ones. And because of the mess that has been created by securities of unknown value, I am guessing the traders are going to be happier in the near future while the underlying fundamentals get sorted out, and by 'near' I mean possibly quite a few years.