“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write… but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
-Alvin Toffler
On New Year’s Day, one of our team’s most valuable players, Tanya Clark, sent our firm that Toffler quote as a reminder to continue to keep doing more of what we have been doing here since we started the firm in 2008. Demand from yourself to evolve. It remains the most critical aspect to a proactive risk management process. What worked yesterday does not have a birth right to work tomorrow. Be objective. Be the change you want to see every day.
Alvin Toffler is what the mass media refers to as a “futurist.” He and Ray Kurzweil are two of my favorite thought leaders in this category of my Amazon directory. While their thought process wouldn’t work if carbon copied into our daily objective (being right on markets), there are certainly components of their conclusions that are additive to how we ask THE questions here at Research Edge.
One of THE questions I have for 2009 is how bearish are the bulls? Since we have been bullish for the last month, and are now upping the ante for an “Obamerica” January squeeze, a discerning investor asked me on Wednesday who I thought the incremental “buyer” of stocks would be? Good question. If it’s not your local hedge fund mafia member who was fired and/or sent on a mission to “Chindia” for Q1, who could actually buy stocks?
The answer of course is a whole lot of people that didn’t lever themselves up to the gills with stocks at this time last year. There were plenty of winners in the 2008 game and this morning, these capitalists are fired up to get that 930AM bell rung and get this 2009 game started. We have been admiring John Paulson’s $36B hedge fund as of late – and he may be the only person I can find that was more openly bullish in December I was. The only person who was bearish at this time last year at least. Why is that? Maybe it’s because he is ALLOWED to be bullish…
After seeing the worst US stock market decline in 77 years, are the bulls allowed to be less bearish? This was the 2nd worse stock market season since 1871, and according to my old Yale economics professor’s math (Robert Shiller, who gave me a B+ by the way, and I am still bitter about that), the SP500, with dividends, recorded an annual decline of -40.3% in 1931. That was much worse than the prior 2nd place holder, 1937, which lost -30.7%. At -38.5%, the revisionist historians now get to put 2008 as the silver medalist in futility.
As interestingly, if you look under the hood of the US market in December, the returns across the major market indices were bullish! The SP500 closed the month UP +0.80% at 903; the Nasdaq was UP +2.7%; and there was a bull market in the Russell 2000, locking in a HUGE +5.6% December 2008 gain!
I know, I know… this wasn’t supposed to happen. Neither was Wednesday’s +14% intraday squeeze move in crude oil (which we sold into). But they happened… and once again, I must ask myself the same question – from commodities to stock markets, how bearish are the bulls?
The key here is that most of the bears who locked arms with me at this time last year (Roubini, Rosenberg, etc…) are still ragingly bearish. It would be really mean to kick off 2009 rhyming off all the bulls who have recently turned bearish, and I’m really going to try to be “nicer” in 2009, so I won’t go there… but the reality of it all is that I can’t, for the life of me, find anyone on the sell side who was bearish that is now bullish. There are a lot of buy side PMs who get this, and there are 34 million online brokerage accounts in this country who get it… but consensus TV doesn’t get it yet… because no one from “Investment Banking Inc.” is allowed to get onto the You Tube, and “in their view” be bullish!
Now don’t get all horned up and charge ahead buying yourself SP Futures this morning. For the immediate term “Trade” I don’t like you buying the open. Inclusive of Wednesday’s +1.4% meltup, the SP500 has already tacked on +3.8% in the last 48 hours of trading, putting it’s “re-flation” from the November lows at +20% (which is why I made sales on Wednesday). Alongside volatility (VIX) being cut in half in the last 6 weeks, the trading range for the US market has narrowed materially. This, altogether, is bullish, but at a price. Buy low and sell high is the ole school game that’s back in town. Do not chase the pundit patrol this morning – wait.
Witness last year’s Asset Allocation “call of the year” (being in cash) or not buying into the vortex CNBC slogan of “free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity” while the US government was getting into the business of socializing corporate America’s losses… patience pays.
The bears are bearish, and the bulls aren’t bullish. Buy the SP500 on down days in the trading range that we have issued in the past few weeks – that remains 865-881. Make sales after +3-6% market moves. “Learn, unlearn, and relearn…” The future for the new American capitalist, who sees the opportunity of The New Reality, couldn’t be more bullish, at a price…
Best of luck out there in 2009,
KM
