Enjoy the rally while it lasts - but expect to take a sucker punch - Telegraph.co.uk
Bear market rallies can be explosive. Japan had four violent spikes during its Lost Decade (33pc, 55pc, 44pc, and 79pc). Wall Street had seven during the Great Depression, lasting 40 days on average. The spring of 1931 was a corker.
James Montier at Société Générale said that even hard-bitten bears are starting to throw in the towel, suspecting that we really are on the cusp of new boom. That is a tell-tale sign.
"Prolonged suckers' rallies tend to be especially vicious as they force everyone back into the market before cruelly dashing them on the rocks of despair yet again," he said. Genuine bottoms tend to be "quiet affairs", carved slowly in a fog of investor gloom.
Another sign of fakery – apart from the implausible 'V' shape – is the "dash for trash" in this rally. The mostly heavily shorted stocks are up 70pc: the least shorted are up 21pc. Stocks with bad fundamentals in SocGen's model (Anheuser-Busch, Cairn Energy, Ericsson) are up 60pc: the best are up 30pc.
Teun Draaisma, Morgan Stanley's stock guru, expects another shake-out. "We think the bear market rally will end sooner rather than later. None of our signposts of the next bull market has flashed green yet. "We're not convinced the banking system has been fully fixed," he said
(The entire article at link above)
I'm not convinced either. But I am convinced Ben has a printing press, knows how to use it, and the new money seems to find its way to the banks.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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