Wow, it's just like old times, isn't it boys and girls? Beanie's back touting his can't-lose system. Ned is spending his time between self-love sessions creating new email and Disqus accounts so he can troll the site. And people are saying the bulls are here to stay permanently.
But here's my growing problem with my own bearishness – – – there are still many stocks which represent marvelous long opportunities. In spite of the March 6-May 7 rise, it only took a few days to bring many high-flying lottery issues down to attractive levels again. Today stunk for me on the bear side, but my bull plays did well, and I tripled the number of lottery positions I had in my IRA account.
Here are all the positions I have in my IRA – – all of them about equally dollar-weighted, and all of them bullish. I truly think many of these have the potential to double (or more) in value before autumn.
I still am loaded up on puts and shorts, but I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with them. But I'm going to let my stops do their work – – not my level of enchantment.
Finally, someone mentioned how this was a "bearish blog." I take issue with that characterization. Do I tend to tilt bearish? Yes. Do my best, fastest profits happen in down markets? Yes. But am I only focused on shorting? If you believe that, you really haven't been paying attention.
I've said it a million times, and I'll say it a million-and-one: I think the U.S. equity market is, ultimately, competely screwed, but people are dumb enough (and their memory short enough) to get taken for a ride yet again. How far this countertrend rally goes is anyone's guess. My own guess is 1050 to 1200. And I think – hyperinflation risk notwithstanding – a value of 4,xxx on the Dow is coming in the next few years. But until then, I'm going to try my damnedest to profit from the market in spite of any "wrong" direction.
