Popular - Today: Slope Of Hope with Tim Knight

Weeks ago, as we approached the fiscal cliff circus, I seriously thought we would have a repeat of what happened last summer. At that time, during the "prequel" to this fiscal cliff debate, the S&P 500 plunged nearly 20% in a mere twelve trading days, virtually without a pause (it brings a tear to my eye just to think of it; our friends at ZeroHedge have put together an interesting analog between the two).

The current market seems to love the fiscal cliff. It can't get enough of all these press conferences, horse-trading, and tit-for-tat. Stocks have been thrusting higher almost without interruption since the morning of November 16th. It's just another in a long, long series of disappointments over the past four years.

So I wanted to put a few bullets into the bearish argument, just for the sake of balance. Plenty of predictions in the world of financial pundidtry go wrong (just look at my SocialTrade stack of Prediction Fails for a sampling.) I've certainly given my fair share of predictions that failed to pan out. So let's take a few swipes at the apparently ludicrous notion that the stock market is going to fall anytime in our natural lifetimes.