Sete momentos mais marcantes de Centeno no Banco de Portugal

[Ulisses Pereira]

Rough Market Rides in 1990's Rut

By James J. Cramer
12/19/2002 09:30 AM EST

"The parallel to 1990 just isn't going away: oil spiking; the gold move; the bad loans.

The only thing different is the intense optimism as measured by the Investors Intelligence numbers. As long as there are so many bulls -- how can there still be 50% bulls after this action? -- we seem unable to mount anything serious. It's almost as if, when we hit the 50 bulls level, we stall out and crash until we are back under 40 bulls. The reliability of the data shocks me, given how imprecise the sample is.


Worse, it is almost criminal how you can't stay short when we get ugly or stay long when we get pretty. I suspect that in a couple of weeks, all those beautiful shorts will evaporate into the ether of negativity.

In fact, it's worse; if you try to stay long through the selloff, you give back more performance than almost anyone can bear. But if you try to stay short during the upswing, you are betting against KLA-Tencor at $28 and you find it at $46, enough to wipe out all but the most confident and deep-pocketed of bears. Given that psychology is the only game in town, we might as well go hire shrinks to give us a market read. They know more than Abby Joseph Cohen or Rich Bernstein at this point, don't they?

Interestingly, if you are willing to trade for 20% moves, you can prosper. You have to be able to let loose just at the point of breakout. Yeah, the technicians can't be too happy with that. You also have to put bids in right at the point of breakdowns; again, very frustrating.

But other than that rapid-fire runaround trading, it's virtually impossible to make money on these moves.

Ugh. "

(in www.realmoney.com)