When ‘Fear-Mongering’ Is Considered ‘Prudence’
As the markets have churned over the last week or two, the bears have been quick to jump on every opportunity to play town crier to the short-lived, so-called "Trump Bump."
(Hey, I thought we only gave names like that to storms and Hollywood couplings? When did the financial markets hit the big time?)
Overvalued
All that noise will now be ringing in the ears of the average long-term investor.
And far more damage has been done to investors by planning for the next setback / bubble / Armageddon Event / Apocalypse, than has ever been lost long-term in the throes of any of those eventual monsters.
Still, even today as we sit in the 2% or so range below the most recent all-time highs, the chatter about the so-called stock market overvaluation bubble that’s set to burst remains louder than ever.
How and Why?
Look, the talking-heads on the financial channels love to call in the Black Swans and say every market is a bubble. If it goes up "too much" then it must be a bubble, right?
But, what do they mean by "too much?"
The problem is that these calls for panic are far too easily made, and never seem to require an apology for being wrong after the fact. Think about it: Who’s ever held accountable for wrongly predicting the apocalypse?
We’ve been under the cloak of fearing expecting the next shoe to drop for so long now that fear-mongering is now considered like some form of prudence.
And pessimism always sounds far cleverer than optimism, like a short cut to thinking or an easy way out; a route taken by many well-known authors who are far busier marketing their latest epiphany about the end of the world as we know it than trying to forecast likely outcomes.
After all, if the market just goes higher then they can always say the bubble and ensuing crash will be that much worse.
But the song remains the same: The crash is always just around the corner.
Just keep’em looking over their shoulders and the best sellers will fly off the shelves.