The Markets are Never Wrong

Saw this quote on CNBC.com today. The names are withheld to protect the speaker - because the market will punish him/her enough.

Analyst X of Y-based financial advisory firm ZZZ says markets have "got it wrong" in the last few months by incorrectly factoring in a Greek default, a U.S. recession and hard landing in China.

Perhaps. But unless you are trading economy futures on Intrade you don't have a clue about why you are in business. The idea is to buy and sell securities, commodities and other tradables to make money. The market can go up for a year "and be wrong" but if you were short then you got creamed.  Who care what the inputs to tangential analysis do?

The market's job is not to forecast anything. The market's job is to be a place where buyers and sellers do their business. It does not care who you are and what you think. It does care what the masses do. If the masses feel spunky and want to buy more aggressively it will go up to attempt to keep supply and demand in equilibrium.

Guess what? The market does not have a mind. It does not want to do something. It just is. Our jobs as analysts is to read the signs the market gives us and formulate an opinion on just how spunky people are.

OK, I have calmed down now. And yes, I do write "the market wants to go up" or "the market feels toppy." Perhaps I think the market is my kid brother and when someone disses him I get angry.

It is a fine line between personifying the market to make torpid analysis a little more palatable and actually believing it is alive and capable of making mistakes.