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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (56772)	12/1/2001 10:11:34 PM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Portfolio Strategy Bottoming Out Kenneth L. Fisher, Forbes Magazine, 12.10.01, 12:00 AM ET forbes.com The year-end Investment Guide presents a great time to assess the overall market and where we are headed next year. I've been fully bearish throughout 2001, starting in January. The spring 2001 rally caused many to turn bullish. Not me. In the Sept. 17 issue (which was in your mailbox two weeks before the issue date) I expressed confusion that a market bottom was taking longer to arrive than I first envisioned. I then said the bottom might not be "until the end of the year or, heaven forbid, until early next year." I reiterated my rule about avoiding being bearish for longer than 12 months. Because I turned bearish at the outset of 2001, that year-end deadline is approaching. So start buying soon, right? Longtime reader Graham Munro of Toronto e-mailed asking about how to allocate his investments now that it's time to invest again: value versus growth, country weights, etc. I advised Munro to slow down. It may be time to break my 12-month rule. Let me begin by quoting from my Apr. 24, 1995 column: "Never stay bearish longer than 18 months; 12 months in any but the most extreme situations. Bear markets last about a year. If you are bearish and prices don't fall in a year, you are obviously seeing ghosts. If you do hit it right, and prices fall, force yourself back in after a year. You may not hit the bottom but will have missed plenty of the drop and won't miss the next bull rise." Well, until very recently, I've been right.