I'll just say one thing that's on my mind, since we're a safe distance from the potential ultimate top of this countertrend rally.
It is relatively easy, at S&P 842.50, to say what we'll be like at, say, S&P 1050. We can soberly declare that….
- Optimism will be rampant;
- Fear will have died away;
- Obama and Geithner will be heralded as heroes
- All evidence will point to last month as the bottom
Yes, yes, it's all too easy. Everyone can agree on the above. And everyone might think they'll be ready to pounce then.
But I'm here to tell ya, when the S&P is at 1050 (or higher), very few people will actually have the guts to short the market. Drip by drip, I'm already seeing hope and optimism infect folks, but it isn't widespread yet. We can, here in April, speculate how rational and cool and sensible we'll be in September.
But it's going to be a different world. Slope is probably going to be crowded with nay-sayers and told-ya-so'ers. There's just one slip5ham right now, but there will be fifty in here by autumn. Shorting is going to seem as out-of-fashion and foolish as it was in, oh, October 2007.
Running a bearish blog was easy earlier this year, because the bears won. We had nothing left to prove. Everything we said ultimately came to pass in spades. But the bulls are going to creep back in, horn by horn, pig by pig, and we bears are going to be the freaks again.
I'm looking forward to it. I like being a freak. But don't be so sure how bearish you'll feel when the time comes. Some will join me. Some will laugh. Most will wait and see. In the meantime, we must be patient and guileful.
