IMA’s CEO and Chief Investment Officer Vitaliy Katsenelson, in a recent Real Vision interview, offered up the perfect analogy for the market environment we in our view presently face:

“I thought I was a great skier because I was skiing in Keystone, a relatively small resort, and the mountain was perfectly groomed; I was always the first one down the mountain. And then one day we went to Vail and it snowed a lot; the snow was very deep, and it was horrible. I would fall like every five minutes, and I hurt my shoulder actually.

So how does that relate to the market? If you were invested in the market over the last ten years, the Federal Reserve basically groomed the slopes, it was like you were skiing in Keystone. So you think you have a perfect form, etcetera; except this is not the real market. At some point you’re going to have a real market and it’s going to snow a lot, and you’re probably going to find out that you’re not as good an investor as you thought you were, because the slopes will not be perfectly groomed.”

I’ve been preaching constantly for the past several months (in our firm’s strategy meetings) that every Tom, Dick and Mary can do a bull market. Heck, clients can do those all by themselves. Now, if we can nail the next bear market (whenever it comes); meaning if, at a minimum, we can shelter our clients from the bulk of the hit, we will have earned our keep for many years to come. Well, at least till the next bear market.