Some food/foder for thought:
Warning -- all 2001 predictions wrong!
Go contrarian, spend bearish and invest bullish
By Paul B. Farrell, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 12:05 PM ET Jan 3, 2001
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LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) - Breaking news: Nasdaq off peak 50 percent, worse year ever! Total decline in U.S. stock value: $2.8 trillion. Goldman's Internet stock index collapses from 800 to 200. Economy slowing too fast. Economists, securities analysts, bankers, executives all cut back. Consumer confidence lowest in two years. New president bearish.
Great news! Yes, fantastic. All this extreme negativity is actually one of the strongest bullish signals ever - contrarians love it!
Why? Contrarian indicators are cycles-based. Simply stated, it's always darkest before dawn. When things can't possibly get any worse (bearish), that's a bullish signal. Get it? Day traders understand it. Eastern mystics got it long ago: Yin/Yang. The great ebb'n'flow between extreme opposites. A natural law. Fitting trends in stock prices, economic stats, earnings estimates, consumer confidence, even the weather and teen fashions. What goes up, must come down. And visa versa.
Think positive in 2000 - go contrarian
Top money managers like Sir John Templeton got it. His strategy for "outperforming the majority of investors requires doing what they are not doing. Buy when pessimism is at its maximum. Buy what most investors are selling [though] buying when others have despaired takes fortitude."
Get it? You go where the herd ain't. Go contrarian! I remember back in January 1998 when Wall Street's finest said the market couldn't possibly rise 20 percent for a fourth straight year. History said no. Statistics said no. But America loves going contrarianism. We got our fourth year. And a fifth.
So here's my humble predictions for year-end 2001, flying in the face of the excessive doom'n'gloom bearishness of the past few months:
Dow Jones Industrials up to 13,333 (top was 11,908 in 2000).
S&P 500 up to 1,777 (top was 1,553 in 2000).
Nasdaq bounces back up to 4,444 (top was 5,132 in 2000).
And bet on a new Nasdaq record in 2002. You don't agree? Too aggressive? That's okay. But remember, positive thinking helps people sleep better. Even make money.
Yes, avoid excessive spending. But when it comes to investing, stay bullish. Now's the time to buy stocks and stocks funds, not lose confidence, panic, and overload on bonds and money markets.
Bears miss the turning point
Back in the mid-1990s, I published a stock market newsletter on short-term trading trends. We computed a weekly Future News Index, a consensus sentiment index of about 40 other market newsletters.
In late 1994, the FNX index turned 80 percent bearish, and stayed bearish well into 1995. During that bearish period, one technical newsletter publisher, an esoteric Elliott Wave Theorist, published a book predicting a 100-year bear market, arguing that the Dow would drop to 400 from 4000. By mid-1995, all those roaring bears looked foolish, having missed the beginning of a five-year bull run.
My advice to all those bears out there is simple, go contrarian. Negative thinking is our worst enemy. Like Templeton says: "Buy what most investors are selling." Go where the herd isn't. Go contrarian. |
