As one of our TradingWithCody.com subscribers phrased it in the Subscriber Chat Room on Friday, it’s a good time for everybody’s favorite gameshow, “Who’s more scared right now, the bulls or the bears?”
With the TV on the background this morning, I saw the “Capitalize on it” ads on CNBC and I heard the suddenly relentlessly bullish commentators talking about how this market that’s now up 10% on the year(!) can’t be stopped on there and my old alma mater, Fox Business. I thought back to a time just about 60 short trading days ago. Back then the ads on CNBC were something about “Rise above” and featured commentators pleading with their cronies in the Republican/Democrat Regime to save us from fiscal-cliff-induced economic disaster and all the commentators on every business show were scared, panicked, bearish or some combination of the three.
Back then I wrote the following.
Do you guys remember the worries that everybody had last year about taxes rising? Do you realize that despite the incessant pounding of the panic drum by the mainstream media over this year’s fiscal-cliff negotiations that we went through the same damn thing last year?
And do you remember how despite the mainstream media’s obsession over the same issues peaking at about the same time last year, do you remember how the markets traded to kick off the year?
Last year’s big rally literally started on December 28, 2010, as the forces of panicky headlines and tax-avoidance selling were theoretically the primary near-term drivers of the markets.
That means, we probably need to already stop with the near-term bearishness I wrote about at the top of the markets last week and start to get ready for a potential, if obvious, pop in the new year. This sure ain’t scientific and that’s why I call it a “Feet-to-fire” analysis, but as Mark Twain told us, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
Now take a look at a YTD chart for the markets through March 11 this year:
- Is the market a poet and it doesn’t even know it?
Look familiar? The markets’ charts so far this year sure have ended up “rhyming” with last year’s charts. And I’m no chartist, but if I were, I’d sure be talking about the likelihood of those charts from this year and last year continuing to rhyme. I think the reason behind those charts is a lot like I explained at the time of that post – into year end there was a lot of tax-related/fiscal-cliff selling pressure and a lot of pent-up buying power ready to be unleashed in the new year.
So anyway, even as I’m sure you can tell which way I’m starting to lean for the near-term, let’s play “Who’s more scared right now, the bulls or the bears?”
No trades just yet for me today.
