In defense of Mr. Fleckenstein, which I doubt he needs, you and everyone else who looks at the DOW as an absolute view of the market are wrong. You only have to look through my portfolio to find many stocks that have not gone up.
I believe Bill mostly argues the problems of technology companies that have lost their pricing power, or technological edge, and predicts they will eventually have to fall. It's the investors mania that continues to drive the stocks higher because they have in fact decoupled from their underlying reality.
But in the end, it seems to me that playing Bear is much to much work for such a little return. If you are very good, you can make 100% return, but then you'll always have costs associated with short positions that you won't have with owning stocks, not to mention risk of being wrong.
Now, compare this with people who invested in any really great company over the last 5 years. Some could be looking at returns of several 1000 percent.
So, I guess my question is what is the point in putting all this energy into such low paying investments? Isn't the mindset of chasing the negative deal detracting from your really great returns found on positive investments in really great companies?
Regards,
Mark |
