We’re not even close according to David Rosenberg:
“Short interest on the Nasdaq down 1.6% in the first week of August?
The Rasmussen investor confidence index at 80.4? Call us when it hits 50, which in the past was a “classic” washout level.
Investors Intelligence did show the bull share declining further this past week, to 33.3% from 36.7%. But the bear share barely budged and is still lower than the bull share at 31.2%. Are we supposed to believe that at the market lows, there will still be more bulls than bears out there? Hardly. At true lows, the bulls are hiding under table screaming “uncle!”.
Yes, Market Vane equity sentiment is down to 46, but in truth, this metric is usually in a 20-30% range when the market correction ends. We are waiting patiently.
As for bonds, well, Market Vane sentiment is 73%. Now what is so bubbly about that. Call us on extreme positive sentiment when this measure of excessive bullishness is closer to 90%, and we’ll be in the correction camp hopefully by the time this happens.”
I would tend to agree. We have seen nothing in the fear gauges that convinces me that people believe in a sustained downturn in the economy. The cult of the equity investor has spent the last several months debating the possibility of a bubble in bonds, however, almost every single person who makes these claims is an owner of stocks and I have more and more trouble finding people these days who believe in bonds. Yet, for some odd reason there is a never ending love affair with the equity portion of their portfolio. Perhaps the bubble they should be more concerned about is the one that has been imploding underneath them over the course of the last 10 years.
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.
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