Hey there,
"~" is called a tilda(sp). H&Q recommendations are great contrarian indicators. It goes to the motives of analysts. They want to look good so they recommend stocks that are up and pan stocks that are down. The exact opposite of what an investor should do. Not many track recommendation performance for long and there is always an immediate blip when the recommendation hits the wire. After the stock reverses, the analyst will flip. This is because the analyst will bot recommend a stock that is sinking. Analysts do not make money in stocks, they make money looking good so they can sell subscriptions. One friend who used to be an analyst for fidelity said if the analyst was so good at picking stocks they wouldn't waste their time advising others. He went on to say that the vast majority of analysts are MBA fresh out of school with little industry experience. But they do have a Tylanol effect on stocks (fast temporary).
re:Bull/Bear - I think this bull market will never end. In fact if you look at the market long term enough, there was never a bear market. Just short term corrections. Seriously, the market as a whole is chaotic with few strange attractors. It is a fair bet that the longer a chaotic system behaves in one particular way, the surer you can be that it will soon behave in an opposite way.
I like Jimmy Rodgers. He reminds me of Mark Twains account of the first steam paddle river boat. It was docked and there was a multitude of spectators. Above the murmer you could hear a guy saying "they can't get it going", "It will never work". Just then there was a huge puff of smoke and the wheel started to churn and the boat pulled away. After the crowd cheered and the noise died down you could hear the same guy saying "they can't make it stop, It will never stop." He's very entertaining. When you have a lot of money it's easy to be a contrarian. Also it's likely that you want to stamp out economic growth so your bonds don't lose value.
It's interesting that years ago it would be unthinkable for the governmant to participate in a plan that limited the growth of the economy. Yet, today, all you have to do is say that your fighting inflation and it's OK. I think that the US government is motivated in keeping bonds attractive because the national debt is so big, there would be real trouble if the yields went up. So the government has a huge interest in manipulating the bond market. Thus, no economic growth is good.
What's more surprising is that people who own stocks are buying this line about inflation. It's only a matter of time before earnings growth will be flat. All economic indicators point to this. Yet, in the face of these facts the S&P PE multiple is still is climbing. What will unravel all of this? Well, it's like Jimmy keeps saying. "If foreingers stop buying US bonds, it will all unravel". This will lead to increasing intrest rates in the face of no economic growth. At this point even shorting spiders wont help.
oh well...hope everyone has a good weekend and ready for a short week.
peter
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