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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doo who wrote (33184)	11/11/1999 5:17:00 PM
From: michael r potter	Respond to of 99985

To label one-self bull or bear, it is very hard to completely overcome that self bias and trade accordingly. Two things are undeniable. The long term trend is up-bullish bias. However, market indices are at extremes of valuation by many measures-bearish [or at least cautious] implications. If one truly labels one self, rather than bull or bear, an opportunist, one is constantly able to adjust and take advantages of opportunities where ever they appear, without first going through a bias filter that might reject otherwise good trades or investments. If one believes in the historic overvaluation [certainly not in all stocks-lots of cheap ones out there] in the popular averages and if one believes regression to the mean is a valid principle, then I believe it will be ever more important to employ flexibility in going long and short with equal ease. Mostly I stay invested long individual stocks, but continue to manage risk/reward in those positions, and have under utilized shorting. Has worked well, but it is not likely a one sided approach will work as well in subsequent years. It will be very useful to go long or short with equanimity [I know many of you do both with equal ease], or at least hedge existing positions with off setting trades. But again, labels, whether self generated or internalized from others, are inimical to obtaining maximum results. If one has to be applied, Opportunist-go where the money is. Mike