Am I the only one to detect a slight tinge of frustration and sourness in Alan Abelson's weekly Barron's entry? A 300-point Dow explosion over a week will do that to any self-respecting permabear and god knows Mr. Abelson is one very prominent and permanent member of the ursine species.
I quote: "We can't say {Note from blog's author: he's a sucker for that imperial "we"} when the irrepressible urge of investors to buy will dissipate, whether it'll happen overnight or over time or what precisely will cause it to do so. All we can say confidently is that it'll happen, and we're not talking about the hereafter."
I even sense some discouragement there but I might be reading too much into it.
1 comment:
Wow. Was I wrong about this!!!!! Alan Abelson (1925-2013) lived to see his warnings vindicated. The problem, as always, is that he was too early, which, in the great scheme of things, does not seem like a big deal but matters a whole lot when you're a short-term trader, which I confess to be, at least in some of my investments. Had investors sold when he turned bearish, which was a great deal earlier (by several years) than the statement I'm referring to in this post, they would've left a lot of money on the table because the market kept going up and up until it didn't (the great crash started in the fall of 2008). To make a very long story short, it is not about the prediction, it is about the time horizon. Any stock market prediction should have at least two components: a direction (up or down) and an expiring date. Otherwise, it is useless.
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