The Big Fat U.S Bubble? …and What If You Invested Today and Today is The Top

It’s a bubble. I predict the end will be sometime this month. It is at times like these I wish I knew how to build a slideshow!

On the other hand, if this post though does not make Alley Insider and Buzzfeed in the form of a slideshow with ‘Geico ads’ , all bets are off.

Now that I sound like every other person on television, let’s dig in a bit.

A lot of smart people have hinted at a bubble – Bill Gurley, Fred Wilson, every economist on Twitter and Henry Blodget.In fact, here are some ‘top’ and ‘crash’ calls made on CNBC since 2009:

Despite the calls, I keep finding investable stocks and ideas as well as backable entrepreneurs.

I learned long ago that worrying about ‘bubbles’ is a waste of time. They happen and will keep happening in this globally connected shrunk world.

Bubble calling in an era of blogs and twitter is too easy.

There is a LOT of ‘froth’ in the system caused most likely by coordinated money printing and low interest rates. Everything possible was written about this subject by 2010.

The ‘frothiest’ statistics I could point to today include the following:

1. The Chinese have opened 29 million brokerage accounts in 2015.

2. Dick Fuld is not in jail, he’s on a press tour saying Lehman would have survived.

3. IPO’s are as a whole growing in unprofitability:

This chart on % of IPO's unprofitable – another reminder (as in 2000 and 2007) prices are getting stretched. $SPY

— BL834 (@Lach14) May. 31 at 08:17 AM

4. Meb Faber has this GREAT post entitled ‘10 bearish charts and 1 bullish chart‘. For me, the one bullish chart overrides the nine bearish charts because I don’t need to time the market.

I don’t know if this is ‘peak froth, a ‘bubble’ or ‘euphoriamageddon’, but I do know that when the markets turn I will get caught and I will have to take some losses. I also know that my private investments will take a bigger hit because they are illiquid. I always communicate this to my clients and I have learned to live with investing returns that are not smooth.

This great Zortrades post with ‘advice for young traders‘ hits home for me and everyone should read it. This part specifically:

–“90% of traders fail” is a stat that gets thrown around quite often, more than likely its a made up stat. But if it is true, then these traders are failing in a market that has a tendency to go up. Since 1988 the SP500 has been up 22 out of 27 years, 81% of the time. Think long and hard as to why traders are failing in such a good environment, and remember that your biggest challenge in this arena is YOU. With these 2 stats in mind the next two points should hit home.

–There is something smart about doing nothing (when it comes to the indices).

–If you favor the short side, love shorting, wake up in the morning looking for next big short, etc..then I believe you have not found yourself as trader yet.

Finally, say you put your only $10,000 to work today and it actually is the exact top? How would you do? According to Ben Carlson who ran the numbers on all the past worst times to invest…not so bad.

It’s OK to start investing…even today.

2 comments

  1. yentrog31 says:

    I stayed in my Gov Thrift fund during the ‘Great Recession’ and lost my 35/40%. But I realized I had a multi-year time frame and if I got out I would not get the rebound. Some of my close friends could not take the pain and switched to bond/treas. funds and didn’t get the big comeback. So sound advice.

  2. pointsnfigures says:

    in the floor trading days, 90% of everyone that walked on the floor did fail. They failed for all kinds of reasons and it didn’t really matter if it was a bull or bear market. the floor was a very different kind of place and it took a very special kind of person to make it there. the job was physical as well as mental-and understanding how to manage your losers and roll out of them was paramount-also acting extremely quickly. Hence, 99% of floor traders aren’t successful on a screen because those skills don’t mean dick on a screen.

Comments are closed.