Tuesday, July 6, 2010

NYT highlights the bears




In the Business section of the July 4, Sunday New York Times there were two profiles of prominent market and economic pessimists.

Rogoff and Reinhart are two economists who collaborated on a book "This Time is Different" which recounts the history of financial crises over the past 800 years. Judging from their public statements they think that the consequences of the 2008-09 financial crisis will be serious and long lasting. The Times profiled them on the front page of the business section.

The fellow whose picture is at the top of this post needs no introduction. He is Robert Prechter of the Elliott Wave Theorist. He has been a vocal, long term bear on the world stock markets and the world economy for years. This story appeared inside the business section.

I think one can infer from this that the NYT business section editors believed that the thoughts of two prominent bears on the economy would be of interest to its readers on July 4. The media are in the business of telling people what they want to hear. So I take these two stories as more evidence highlighting the strength of a bearish investment crowd which has grown quickly during the current 15% drop in the averages. I think the next big move in stock prices from current levels will be upward.

6 comments:

  1. lets hope you are right..........

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  2. Hopefully you are right Carl. Otherwise the economy will tank again and Main Street will suffer more than what it already has.

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  3. Carl, you have lived long enough to realize that at some point both permabears (like Pretcher) and permabulls (like you) are going to be correct....the trick is to be on the right side of the trend, which the little guys can seldom achieve

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  4. Agree with Futia.

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  5. Time to buy stocks, from today's WSJ:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704545004575353102793970916.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories

    "Small Investors flee stocks..."

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  6. It does not matter what news says. But what matters is the crowd behind the news and what stage they are in. Are Bears in the stage to disintegrate?. How many ppl are bearish?. I see more longs in the system than shorts. So that may be contrarian play as well

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