OT: To bear or not to bear?
I know a lot of people throw out words like "Bear Market", or Bull Market and seem to mean something like a 10% drop, or a 20% drop.
But let's say a market (the NAS) for example, makes some sort of historical move, say up 65% in one year, then it doesn't seem to me that the "BEAR" could start until the NAS had dropped at least 45% of the original 65%. In other words, I wouldn't consider it a true "BEAR" unless we got a real drop of the entire 65% of the previous year. So I don't really consider what's happened lately a bear. And that's why I think Monty and Bambs don't think we've seen enough fear out there yet from the masses. Just as an example, my wife's very meager 401K went from 23k (that she actually put in it) to 105k (at it's high) to 85k now. While it's not fun to lose 20% of a portfolio (no matter how small), who cares that it's down 20% from the highes? It's up over 4X. Most people are content to sit on what they have in the belief that the market will continue to grow on average 10% or so a year adinfinitum. That's not fear. And if the market continues to fall, then they might change their minds in a hurry. That is the 1500 scenario that I don't think/hope we'll see. If we do, I'll be BUYING! So maybe I should hope for it. Nasdaq 2600 is only how many years old? If it's only 2 or 3, can going from 2600 to 5500 to 2600 over a 2 or 3 year span really be called a bear? (just asking). Perhaps it was just a little hickup (up and down) in an ever growing otherwise fairly rational stock market.
Of course, to the day traders (who are always getting scr*wed by something, it's most definetly a bear). But they are going to lose because of taxes or something sooner or later anyway. |
