It Is Not The Critic Who Counts

Are the “experts” completely snowed about how well we’re doing – maybe even as flummoxed as they were in the early 1980s when we were on the doorstep of the first real wave of technology transformation?

Are they so lost in the addictive day-to-day dramas that they’re missing the bigger picture?

Well, here’s a few indicators to suggest they are.

First, the latest AAII Bullish sentiment data:

Let’s now hope for a few weeks of market choppiness and angst-driving tension dead ahead.  

If so that Bull number will be down in the low 20s, conveniently ignoring that we’re still likely to be higher than every monthly close before the last two when the dust clears.

Almost 70% of the crowd is NOT bullish.  

And the latest surveys show that over 85% of the American public has not made a significant investment in the second largest driver of wealth in the history of this country.  

We act in herds. 

Sadly folks, the media and the charlatans and bearish naysayers won’t make you wealthy over the long-term.  

Which means the deciding factor is about behaving differently than the herd.

Can we control our reactions? 

Can we do less and understand it equals more over time?

I’m often reminded of Roosevelt's words as it relates to the next monster in the headlines:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Speaking of Victory....

We are on the brink of a new decade.

It’s set to change everything we know about the world around us.

And it will be laced and clouded with issues, disasters, terrible events and very, very scary periods.  

While those things unfold so too will brand new industries (see below) that we can’t even imagine.

The Latest Jobs Data

In a word the data is ‘Smokin'...

Record setting is just the beginning.  

Find those robots fast my friends. We are running out of humans to take open jobs.  

This helps to explain the record shattering retail world of the current Holiday Shopping Season. 

And yes, this is the same retail world that was dead 12 months ago (if you listened to experts).

The Law of Dominos

The economic dominos keep falling in the direction of people flow.

What we have shared with you for years - to prepare you for the explosive, disruptive and opportunistic world of the 2020s and 2030s - is unfolding as planned under all the noise. 

Demogronomics™ is just beginning to unleash the true forces of the Barbell Economy™ and many years of the very best is still to come.

Pray for some selling and then hold on for the ride in 2020.

And Fear?

Fear is doing what it usually does.

It’s driving scared investors to sell things valued at 17-18 times earnings and then run across the street forming a line to buy things valued at 55-65 times earnings!

Folks, it is not the critic who counts.