I have been through about five crashes I guess. My first one was in 1987 when I was at at Lehman Brothers, my second was the tech bubble crash, my third was the first Iraq War (wasn’t really a crash), my fourth was the crash of 2007-08 and then the flash crash when we dropped about 1000 points in a few minutes. The last one I think was just to make sure we were paying attention and a friendly reminder to keep us on our toes and not get too complacent.
I got to thinking that all those crashes were painful. But I also got to thinking something else. What if you just started investing for the first time in February or March of 2009? You think you entered Oz, the land of milk and honey or Pandora. You are frolicking through the the Fields of Ambrosia with a naked runway model. Probably two or three naked runway models. I would have two models because I like symmetry and it would center the picture better. Me in the middle, with a Cohiba and a Coors light.
Anyhoo, we have created a new investor class whether we realize it or not. It may be this new lucky ship of fools that takes us higher. It is then that the retail investor will come back to the market in droves because they will be sick of hearing these young bucks bragging about how much money they are making in the market. The old guard. You know, the ones that almost lost it all on the first go round will be thinking “that used to be me before the crash, I need to get back in”.
It is when these broken masses return that we will top. The market is an evil mistress. It waits for everyone to be at the party before it really takes away the punch bowel. I just don’t think we are there yet. We’ll see.
My visual of the next top will resemble the move “Carrie”. The gymnasium doors shut, then lock and we will be staring at one pissed off bear covered in blood.
In the meantime, don’t fight the tape and it NEVER hurts to have a hedge on.
