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dragonLZ (99.49)

I don't know why bears...

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9

July 27, 2009 – Comments (9) | RELATED TICKERS: DTG , TEN , SMRT

...have a such big problem admitting that they were (and majority of them still are) just dead wrong about this bull market.

I mean, I have no problem admitting that I am a bull, and as such, a lot of times lose money because I don’t recognize bear markets at the right time. In other words, I either hold onto a stock on its way down for way too long (getting better on this one all the time), or I get burned as I can't wait and buy a stock at the wrong time.

However, when it comes to bull markets: I know one when I see one.

It is just plain crazy to me that some people just don’t see it this time.

They talk about how “fundamentals did not improve so this can’t be a bull market”, or how “this is just a correction in a bear market”, or how “blah, blah, blah”…

I mean, I just don’t get it.

First of all: YOU DON’T ARGUE WITH THE MARKET! (I mean, you can, but you won’t make any money).

If market is telling you “Everything is fine, or is on the mend”, you better believe it (even if you “know” it ain’t so).

Take for example some of the stocks connected with the auto industry. Everybody knows auto industry is in the worst shape ever.  

Tell 95% of the Americans about buying a stock of TRW Automotive, Tenneco, or Arvin Meritor and they will tell you: you are insane. With these companies being suppliers to auto industry, people wouldn’t thouch them even if you gave them these stocks for free.

However, from their March lows, TRW is up a 1,000%, TEN is up 1,500%, and ARM is up 1,300%.

Or what is all that talk about this just being a correction?

In which correction you have returns like these? I haven’t been an investor for a long time (actually I'm quite new to this "game"), but I just can’t believe there was ever “just” a correction with so many tenfold gains (since lows) in so many stocks and in so many industries.

Car Rentals: Dollar Thrifty (DTG) up 2,200%, Avis (CAR) up 2,200%, Hertz (HTZ) up 500%.

Retail: Kirklands (KIRK) up 800%, Stein Mart (SMRT) up 1,000%, Jones Apparel (JNY) up 400%.

Tech: STEC up 900%, RFMD up 600%, ZAGG up 1,000%.

I mean I could go on forever: Gaming, Biotech (majority of them up tenfold), REIT’s, Mining/Metals, …

Simply, everywhere you look, there are stocks that went up 10, even 20 times.

Does that happen in corrections? I don’t think so.

Or what about volume?

That's another easy tell. Just look at the huge difference in volume before (for some stocks ever) and after March in majority of the stocks that performed well this year, and you will know what I mean.

I mean, Bears, just wake up. Realize that there are both bear AND bull markets.

And this one is a Bull.

9 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On July 27, 2009 at 12:56 AM, portefeuille (99.75) wrote:

good post. now you poor guy will be buried by the bear avalanche, i can hear it coming , hehe ...

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#2) On July 27, 2009 at 1:21 AM, checklist34 (99.80) wrote:

porte is right, they will call you bad names.  most specifically naieve, stupid, unintelligent, lucky, cocky, stupid, did I mention not smart?

My portfolio is just a smidge short of being up 150%, lol, and I've never done this before.  Oh, oh, oh lordie to have another chance with more experience.  I don't mean knowing the outcome, I just mean another chance...  I wouldn't have held ANY blue chip companies or ANY company not down at least 80% at hte bottom.  And I wouldn't have raised cash on the way up either.  Maybe in June, the market clearly seemed really heavy and destined to dump at the June highs.  

I am struck by this observation:

A)  the basic goal and joy of the bearish folk seems to be being "right".  A dogmatic goal of being able to say they were correct, their intellect was not denied, they are smart.

B)  the basic goal of bulls is to make money, or maybe they are just optimistic poeple or whatever

C)  the key to maximum profits is flopping.  Not daily, not weekly, not these little micro trends where the market poops out 100 S&P points or rallies 100 S&P points, but the BIG flops, the shift from bull to bear on a larger, 1-2 year scale.  

Floppers are rich.  Bears may make money, and bulls certainly make money (history clearly favors being long-term long -vs- long-term short), but floppers probably ar ethe ones that get really rich.

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#3) On July 27, 2009 at 1:51 AM, checklist34 (99.80) wrote:

on a side note, I am momentarily smitten with a girl to a substantial degree.  Thats a feeling I haven't really dealt with in 10 years.  We met one night at the pub, she's spent a copule of nights at my place.  She said she has a boyfriend but I think I'm alot nicer to hang out with than he is so thats no big deal.  ;)

So many years have gone by since my long time business partner and I started our first business.  We were so cocky when we started, ...  I mean, we could throw on hell of a keg party and get the whole Hooters staff to come over, why couldn't we engineer something?  lol.  The naievity of our beginning is so stunning that if I posted the whole story at least 1/2 of you would throw up like Stan on south park when he sees that girl he likes.  Our gross miscalculation of our talents led us into a situation where we'd failed with 5 businesses and accumulated nearly 1/4 milion of credit card debt (and more debt than that overall), and faced a situation where if we didn't make it big we would be bankrupt.  

Financially, the story ended happily.  We averaged more than 100 hours a week each for the majority of a decade, I haven't had a formal vacation since my early 20s when some buddies and I road tripped to San Diego from the BFE part of the midwest to see if we could pick up California girls.  Most of you couldn't appreciate how we lived, how low our quality of life was if I explained it...  And, on a human level, or a personal level, the story hasn't quite ended happily yet.  We made it big enough to get out of our hole and then some, we sold out, its the American Dream I guess.  But excorcising the demons of all that failure for all those years, of being that broke and that screwed hasn't been a quick ride.  You wake up from your fog of ambition and dedication and slave labor...  with success, but perversely at odds with society around you, and its hard to put it all together.

But the human animal is destined to find the light.  It is so optimistic at its core, so always and forever looking onward and upward, its just a matter of time until we make peace with the bizzarely fluctuating nature of our lives and grin again.  Human we are, and as such we are inevitably destined to find the bright side.  :)

And this brief post, which might seem random or rambling or out of sorts to some, cannotdo justice to the impact that our path in life has had on our persons, our outlooks, or on how strange and challenging it has been to rejoin the world after all those years of work/sleep/sometimes eat/work again.  

So here's to some girl from Wisconsin.  Who is basically always upbeat in the time I've known her, and who in being that way reminded me that analytic minds like mine, always pondering and calculating, pretty much need the opposite to keep us level.  

And here's to more in life than ambition.  Here's to beer, I recommend Leinenkugel Honey Weiss if you aren't in Belgium, in which case I recommend Belgian beer.  And here's to pretty girls, and movies, and college kids who smoke too much pot and drink too much beer and haven't yet any clue that they aren't doing good.  And here's too Hooters, and here's to 90's alternative music, which I am downloading like a fiend on Itunes just to try to remember what I was like before all this.   And here's to my financial advisor who is honestly one of my favorite people ever.

And here's too the Corvette ZR1 that GMX won't ever win because he wasn't quite brave enough to take my bet about S&P 800.  The greatest sports car ever made.

And here's to Ashland Chemical, XL Capital, Teck Resources (formerly Teck Cominco), Genworth, American Capital, Ares Capital, and Bank of America.  My biggest holdings coming out of the march bottom.  

And here's hoping that if we get another big dip, the bears flop and make some money coming out of it this time.  

Dime.

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#4) On July 27, 2009 at 2:39 AM, checklist34 (99.80) wrote:

i don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows

I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes

cinnamon and sugarie and softely spoken lies

you never know just how you look through other peoples eyes

 the first time I heard that chorus I was at a party at an apartment not far from the local mall.  I was trying to flirt with some very short girl named something or other.  It wasn't to be, as is often the case.  Best laid plans of mice and men do sometimes go astray.  I wound up with some girl named Nicole, who in turn wound up having a profound impact on my life.  So it goes.  That was a good party.  Beautiful summer day in a part of the country where summer isn't something thats taken for granted.

but they ain't here anymore

odn't have to settle no goddamn score

cuz we all live under the reign, of one king

Now that song I came to know in the aftermath of the aforementioned Nicole.  The ultimate joke is that she, some years later, gave me  yet another life lesson in that she led me to come to realize that most things are neither as serious as they seem at the time nor as trivial as they seem in retrospect.

iwanna hold the hand inside you

i wanna take the breath thats true

i look to you and i see nothing

i look to you to see the truth

fade into you, its strange you never knew

 life is long, folks.  in the end I think that most lives well lived come to a point where they stop looking to others to see much of anything.  I think as we become, we become more willing to define our own times.  Songs mean less to us, we look less to others for justification and more for, perhaps, complimentary traits or completion or just a good or even peaceful time.

Now that we're here, so far away

From the struggle we thought was in vain

this all finally starst to go away

And all the mistakes, that one life can make

They all finally start to go away

And now that we're here, so far away

I feel like I can face the day

And I can forget, and i'm not ashamed

To be the person that I am today

 Amen.  But, mostly, the greatest song ever written, and, as such, the greatest single piece of art in human history, even though its known to very few

And I fail, but when I can...

Fool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it
Down
If I pick your pockets full of sorrow
Would you run away with me tomorrow,
June ?

We'll try and ease the pain
But somehow we'll feel the same
Well, no one knows
Where our secrets go

So I send a heart to all my dearies
When your life is so, so dreary
Dream
I'm rumored to the straight and narrow
While the harlots of my perils
Scream

And I will fail
But when I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will

Mother weep the years I'm missing
Things once spoken can't be taken

Back


But I'll Shut my mouth and strike the demons
That cursed you and your reasons
Out of hand and out of season
Out of pain and tired of feeling
So bad

When I can, I will
Words defy the plan
But when I can, I will

Fool enough to almost be it
And cool enough to not quite see it
And old enough to always feel this
Always old, I'll always feel this

No more promise no more sorrow
No longer will I follow
Can anybody hear me
I just want to be me
When I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will

 And that, folks, is a wrap.  I miss Sam, and I miss Judd, and I miss Ryan (sorry man, I guess it was me and not you, who could have known?), and I miss Mike and the plane flights, and I miss Lars and Owen even thought my life wasn't good then, and I miss Nicole, and I miss Michelle, and I misse Kimmie, and I miss Paige, oh dear jesus I miss Paige, and I miss Tav, even if I still see her most every day,and I wish a whole lot of people could run into me now so they could realize their life sucks, and I miss Bass, and I miss Wes, and I miss Gilbertson, and I miss my business partner even though I see him every day, he is as gone as the wind...  with respect to what he used to be.  And I miss me.  Once, I was really something, even if I wasn't actually anything.  Now thats kind of flopped in a weird way.  

And I guess this is maybe the first day I've listened to these old songs and not felt loss.  Thats got to be good.  Wahtever the case, I didn't get here by not figureing out what to do tomorrow.  Hopefully tomorrow I figure out Teusday.

Nite CAPs.  

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#5) On July 27, 2009 at 3:24 AM, ozzfan1317 (79.32) wrote:

Awesome song man And I know the feeling the important part is learning from your mistakes and coming out on top and having fun during the ride...lol

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#6) On July 27, 2009 at 8:36 AM, outoffocus (24.47) wrote:

I would rec this post but this post does explain why this is a new bull market. All it states is whats happened.  Explain to me why S&P 1000 to 1100 is justified and sustainable and then maybe I'll be convinced.

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#7) On July 27, 2009 at 2:28 PM, dragonLZ (99.49) wrote:

outoffocus, you didn't get it.

That was exactly my point. I have no idea why S&P will soon hit 1100, I just know it will. The market (gains in so many stocks, in so many industries, and the huge uptick in volume, as explained) is telling me that.

I don't care why fundamentals didn't improve, or why revenues and earnings are down, or why... All I care is the facts (the one market shows us). If we had justification for why this or that will happen (or happened) in the market, everybody would be rich. Think about it. If it was so easy, we'd just buy stocks when media/news tell you economy is booming, and sell them when they tell us economy is going down. But it doesn't work like that. That's why majority of the people never make money in the market. They wait for justification...

You tell me where is the justification for the gains we had so far? Who cares. If you waited for one, you made no money, and that's a fact.

p.s.

You might be right in telling me that "I just stated what happened", but all of this was clear to me back in March.

If needed, can show my real-life buys, and e-mails to my friends.

It was so clear, and it still is.  

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#8) On July 27, 2009 at 3:27 PM, davejh23 (< 20) wrote:

"That was exactly my point. I have no idea why S&P will soon hit 1100, I just know it will. The market (gains in so many stocks, in so many industries, and the huge uptick in volume, as explained) is telling me that...I don't care why fundamentals didn't improve, or why revenues and earnings are down, or why... All I care is the facts..."

You don't care about fundamentals, but you claim that the technicals are clearly telling you that the market is destined to go higher.  You admit that the markets don't behave rationally...yet you think that rational thought proves that the markets are headed higher...so, you could be very wrong.  I'm undecided and am trading cautiously.  You should do a bit of research before claiming that this kind of run up doesn't resemble bear market rallies...if reality, bull markets never start with the kind of rally we've recently seen, which is why many are skeptical.  If the market does pull back, your picks will fall much faster than the market...that's a fact.

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#9) On July 27, 2009 at 11:10 PM, dragonLZ (99.49) wrote:

Good post. I agree with some of what you said, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a bull market. 

I don't rely on technicals, I'm just talking about a simple fact that market is telling us something with these big gains and huge volume. Of course, I kow that bears think it's telling us it's going to crash so bad, none of us will survive ...

However, I think that's exactly what is helping this market - their scepticism. I'm sure you already know about the fact that "when everybody comes to the party, the party will be over"...

Market is changing, and that's why something like this hasn't been seen before. I'm sure when the time comes for the next bear market, it's going to be brutal, just like this bull market is going to be powerful like none of them before...

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