I think that Herb Greenberg has a valid point: Market magic: Back when I was with the San Francisco Chronicle, I used to write more about the market, in general, quoting this maven and that. One of my favorites was George Muzea, of Muzea Insider Consulting in beautiful downtown Reno, Nev., whose calls are based on insider corporate trading. His service, which is very expensive, goes out to a limited group of hedge funds and other high-net-worth clients. What's best is that he's rarely quoted, which is reason enough to ask him what he thinks about the market at this point. His bottom line, of late, is to try to refute the theme that now is the time to buy because you don't fight the Fed.
"In the bottom of a bear market," he says, "you're going to have two factors: heavy insider buying and investor sentiment that is 60% bearish. Right now there's heavy selling and the sentiment is 60% bullish. My work is suggesting that the decline we're in will be longer than anybody envisions. It's not about rates, it's about consumer confidence."
On that score, even here in San Diego, which usually lags behind the rest of the country in a slowdown, I'm told by several plugged-in sources that construction has suddenly started to be, uh, not so constructive. |
