The old timers had an expression that captures the dynamic of our recent stock market surge.
They described such seemingly counter intuitive behavior as “climbing a wall of worry.”
It’s not as if we were lacking confirmation of dismal economic conditions…
The recession is not yet an end, and may even continue into the next year.  Housing prices […]

Those of you of a certain age will recall the old Pogo Comic Strip….and the catchphrase…”we have met the enemy…and they is us”.
The object lesson today is how investors often sabotage their opportunity to harvest market gains through irrational and emotional tinkering.
It turns out that 70% of actively managed funds have lagged market indexes, so […]

(Technical note: Apologies for skipping a post yesterday. BJM underwent a server upgrade which ran into some issues and delayed our ability to post for 48 hours.)
Fabius Maximus
From Wikipedia:
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator (ca. 280 BC–203 BC), was a Roman politician and general, born in Rome around 280 BC and died in Rome in […]

A Short History of Short Selling….
We had a circuit breaker in place all the way through 2007.
Two in fact.
1. The first rule was that you could not sell a stock short unless you had first borrowed the funds.
This was designed to prevent “naked shorting” i.e. selling what you never owned or borrowed in the first […]

Have you had the impression recently that our economy is on the couch, exhibiting full bi-polar, manic-depressive tendencies?
This is a result of the three types of indicators use to measure our peak-to-trough market cycles:

Leading indicators precede the cycle
Coincident indicators occur simultaneously with the cycle
Lagging indicators are always a day late and a dollar short in […]

What a run the markets have had these past four weeks.
But is this the real deal…or just a relief rally as hedge funds and speculators rush to cover their short positions?
Old timers will tell you that the third time is a charm…the third market bottom, that is.
We had the end of year rally off the […]

I found a lost dollar bill the other day, wedged under the car mat when I began to vacuum the interior.
Then I faced the task of how to inject this new found capital back into the economy.  It was enough to buy the new McDouble cheeseburger on McDonald’s dollar menu….and it was enough to buy […]

The Blue Jeans Millionaire blog will celebrate its first anniversary this month.
I thought you might enjoy a different take from someone who has been prognosticating markets and trends for a much longer time, for well over 20 consecutive years to date.
In the investment community, Byron Wien is a legend for his fearless, and […]