First off let me say... Happy New Year to you.
For those of us that remained bearish thru much of 2003, doing so did not generate much happiness... myself included.
My 2003 forecast was dead wrong. I started the year calling for lower stock prices across the board... -clearly that didn't happen.
In spite of the fact that I called the top in the beggining of 2000... that I forecast accurate successive cuts in interest rate ... stayed short for 2000/2001/2002... three great years! 2003 was not, - particularly because we were short.
Even tho I saw the bottom in the internets and the nasdaq, "talking about the divergent market"... we did not act on this observation. Had we done so... 2003 would have materialized very differently. The bottom was established for the nasdaq with stage one bottoms in YHOO and AMZN as well as the qqq's and others.
For many that have followed me ... these last eight months have been a particularly hard horse to ride... with unrelenting pain month after month and little to celebrate ... -unlike 2000/2001/2002 while we danced as wall street burned.
As the saying goes "you are only as good as your last race"...
I will never be right 100% of the time... no investor ever is. With the exception of my exit from the bond market, which was perfectly timed... my views of 2003 were mostly wrong.
Now let us look at 2004... a dow that seemingly appears overbought... a nasdaq that seemingly appears to have bottomed... There are stage 1's (a term for describing botoms or changes in trend typically formed by a cross over thru moving avgs... see Stan Weinstein "Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets" -www.half.com/$12. hard cover -buy it!)
This chart is what I am talking about:
These Stage 1's are abundant in many tchnology companies and optical/telecom equipment companies as well as the qqq's and many lower price shares.
This is where we are focused...
In the final analysis... my desire to grow capital has outweighed my desire/need to be right. Other well known "bears" might do likewise... Perma Bull or Perma Bear... it's the same thing.
My guess is that stage 1 buys will tend to do well. That these are better applications of capital than trying to pick "the top".
We could get "juice" from the Dow as it sells off at some point and money is refocused "shifted" down into growth/tech...
Obviously we will see... 2003 has made me humbler... and that is probably a good thing.
By: Damon Vickers
Enviado: 5/1/2004 17:13
que li até hoje, defendeu o bearmarket de forma "agressiva" particamente até Outubro, altura em que começou a escrever e publicar artigos de forma mais moderada e em Novembro passado reconheçeu finalmente que algo estava errado nas suas analises e convicções em relação ao mercado.