Chatting with a client yesterday, he kicked off the conversation by mentioning that his colleagues have been talking about what a great time it is to buy stocks. He asked my opinion…
I started out by saying it’s totally cool that he’s not reading my blog. We both chuckled, but clearly he’s not. I went on to point out that he already owns a bunch of stocks, although in far more defensive fashion than he did a year ago, as well as other stuff, like precious metals. I then said “no, if the question is should we be getting aggressive right here, definitely not, in my opinion”.
“Now”, I said, “when your colleagues start complaining about how they’re getting killed in the market and are threatening to just dump what little they have left, that’s about when you should start receiving trade confirmations that we began once again buying the more growthy sectors.”
Ran across this by John Hussman this morning:
“The initial decline of a bear market tends to be rather violent. Once prices have dropped sharply, it becomes extremely uncomfortable for investors to reduce their exposure to risk by selling into a decline, even when the prospect of additional losses remains very high. Instead, they often ride out the entire bear market and eventually abandon stocks in a final panic.”