That was scary!
We took a big dip and ended up holding last Thursday’s highs, possibly creating a floor where we had a ceiling at the beginning of the month. The longer you go out in time, the more 12,700 starts looking like a pivotal point and it was the bottom of our November drop as well as well as the top of our 2006-Feb 2007 run, which led to a dip that quickly turned into a 2,000-point rally that started with Q1 earnings coming in better than expected last year (yes, I know it’s so hard to remember our history!).
Cramer’s TheStreet.com and lots of technical traders are still growling that we are in a Bear market and there is a lot of work being put in by the MSM telling you NOT to buy at this bottom and people listen to them, even though these are THE EXACT SAME GUYS who told you to BUYBUYBUY at 14,000, prior to the recent 10% correction. How are you ever going to make any money if you let clueless trend followers tell you what to do?
Yesterday I talked about analysts and why you shouldn’t listen to them and I’m not going to waste time telling you not to listen to TV people because, if you have to be convinced, you are too far gone to help! It’s the rest of the MSM you need to be concerned about as they are full of conflicting views and the insidious thing about getting your information on the Web is that everyone you read links to everyone who agrees with them. This makes whatever you choose to read seem very authoritative indeed.
One of the great problems with our modern age is too much information. There are more words published every day than were published in the entire history of the planet just 100 years ago. Obviously it’s not possible to keep up with it all so we filter and we choose people to filter it for us (I’m one of those people) and even interpret the items they filter and summarize it for us so we don’t even read the original information, just the summary written by the person we choose as our filter.
I in turn rely on my own information network and reading to give me a little perspective and, while I like to think I’m getting a balanced viewpoint, I still feel the need to check on myself from time to time. As a rule of thumb, I tell members they should spend 25% of their time reading things that totally disagree with them. If you do not hear the other side of the argument, you may find your own position doesn’t hold water when it’s finally tested.
I read "Peak Oil" sites, I follow the Drudge Report, visit the Heritage Foundation and, heaven help me, I even watch Fox "News" to keep myself fair and balanced and I try to read a pretty even smattering of bulls and bears BEFORE forming my own opinions. This is something we all should be doing.
That’s why I love our member chat section, we have the most interesting conversations and a lot of very smart, successful people from all over the world come together and discuss all sorts of things, it’s a great environment and I’m very proud to be a part of it.
Thanks to all of you who contribute every day, you keep my life very interesting!
