Bears Exceed Bulls by Most in 17 Years, Investor Poll Says

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by ASusilovic, Jan 10, 2008.

  1. Be aware that now it's easier to short sell, because there's no uptick rule anymore.
     
    #21     Jan 11, 2008
  2. Well everyone and their grandma wants to short the market so it must be time to go long. These polls are useless, unless you use them as contrarion indicators.:D
     
    #22     Jan 11, 2008
  3. Brandonf

    Brandonf Sponsor

    If this is true the opposite would also be true, and its not. Most of the time the crowd is wrong, but not all the time..witness the "great bull market" from 98 to 2000. "Everyone" was bullish..and correct for a time. You certainly would not have wanted to be on the opposite side of it. Same thing COULD happen on the downside.

    Brandon
     
    #23     Jan 11, 2008
  4. Personally, I can't wait for a bear market. There's something about my personality that just enjoys short selling. Ah well.
     
    #24     Jan 12, 2008
  5. When is this ever NOT the case? There's always x trillion dollars in money market accounts, etc. I heard this mantra repeated throughout 2000-2002 "there's x trillion on the sidelines waiting to buy this market". It didn't help..
     
    #25     Jan 12, 2008
  6. MKTrader

    MKTrader

    Uh, the polls are contrarian indicators, so the excessive bullishness at new highs was a sell signal.

    Trading 101.

     
    #26     Jan 12, 2008
  7. first of all, bearish doesn't mean short, and it doesn't even mean in cash

    to see how much retail has moved into cash we need to look at mutual funds inflows for instance

    Also I haven't checked COT figures recently, one should keep an eye on these

    Now, cash on the sidelines doesn't mean that much if levering that cash is too expensive due to tight credit conditions

    On another point, people moving into cash may not do that because they are bearish but just because they need to in order to keep on consuming. How many are just extracting cash from the markets to keep on consuming because the house is not a cash machine anymore. No more refinancings resulting in equity extraction but financial assets liquidation. You just take money where you can.

    All these factors combined make it difficult to interpret whether current levels of bearishness will result in new cash coming into the markets.

    If not, we just may have a short bounce next week on the back of oversold market conditions and slight rally in the financials.

    Lastly, I wouldn't trust polls as they may be used to unchain psychological reactions as seen in the NH primary.

    I'd rather conduct my own poll instead of relying on something that may have an hidden agenda.
     
    #27     Jan 12, 2008
  8. exactly.

    Im strongly bullish right now.Looking for much higher prices by the elections.

    after that its another Santa Claus rally into 2009. uP up and away

    blackguard
     
    #28     Jan 12, 2008