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Strategies & Market Trends : Bob Brinker: Market Savant & Radio Host -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (7104)	8/24/1998 5:39:00 PM
From: wooden ships	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42834

J.F.- In re: "What do you suppose public sentiment will be like at the top? Complacency? Enthusiasm?" I certainly would agree that, anecdotally, the signs of a market top are evident, if not pervasive. The commercials advertising brokers, virtual and otherwise, on CNBC-TV are most telling, it would seem. Here we see folks of all stripes playing the game of stocks, as it were, at all hours of the day and night. There are no losers, only grinning, if not complacently smug, winners. The esteemed Professor Andrew Sarris of Columbia University, movie critic extraordinaire and pioneer film theorist, has said that television advertisements not only represent the leading edge of cinematic technique but also encapsulate a better snapshot of the popular culture at any given instant than the television shows themselves (which last are merely vehicles, according to Sarris, that carry the essential programming of that media, i.e., the com- mercials). What are the TV commercials telling us today about this market? They seem to suggest that stock trading and investing have become the premier national pastime. There may be much truth to this. If memory serves, Larry Kudlow, second in command at OMB during the Reagan tenure and former chief economist at Bear Stearns, has stated that even at the peak of the market in 1929 only 10 per cent of the adult populace directly invested in stocks. In 1990, that number doubled to 20 per cent. According to Kudlow, forty three per cent of the populace are now direct owners of stocks. To be sure, one of the latest polls by Zogby, apparently the only national pollster who correctly predicted the wide margin of victory for the Republicans in 1994 and the arithmetic margin of success by Clin- ton in 1996, indicated that 50 per cent of the adult American public holds stocks. It would seem that Wall Street has become Main Street. That being said, it has become fairly evident that the investing public is not easily shaken from this market. Nonplussed by the occasional dizzying and precipitous declines and with a mind to the long term, the public returns again and again to buy the dips and renew their market vows. For many, the decision to invest for the long haul has been set on autopilot, via 401(k) and 403(b) plans and the like. After all, those seeking enhanced investment returns in a non-inflationary, low interest rate climate have little else to turn to besides the stock market, especially, the US stock market given Pax Americana, US corporate pre-eminence, and the faltering overseas bourses. Therefore, it would seem that a case could be made that-- failing an Art Bell heralded extra-terrestrial alien invasion, a Y2K induced national power grid failure and/or worldwide economic calamity, a titanic asteroidal cataclysm and subsequent global winter, or any of a number of unforeseen catastrophic X-factors-- this market may, indeed, outpace Brinker's oft cited Energizer Bunny until the baby boomers retire beginning anno Domini 2008, as some analysts have opined.