LOL! You rephrased (well) the classical always correct prediction: the markets will fluctuate! The modern tradeable version would be: would the amplitude of the fluctuations be higher or lower? So Iceman: will VXX rise or fall? Good to hear from you Iceman!
"overly bullish" is vague. please quote your SINGLE SPECIFIC before the fact call (it has to include, entry, stop, exit before the fact or soon after they take place) i am gonna venture a guess that i will be waiting for a very long time while you search for such a call....
man, you have no idea what you're talking about markets up 6.5% this year. add dividend and it's 7.5% return in 6 months in the last year markets up 30% major IPOs coming that take capital like LNKD with P/E about 100 market has enough internal bubbles
just to illustrate what i mean: here is an example of my recent SPY:GLD call that happen to work out really nice (even if i may have taken the profits too early) http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3222897#post3222897
Markets rising again, nothing but a steady climb, looked as though there would be somewhat of a buying opportunity this morning, but that quickly went away as the markets pushed higher, now that they are higher all they have to do is keep them up until the close which should be no problem. A good jobs number on Friday and the DOW could easily break 13,000!
Posted by myself in Neke's journal on February 13th, 2011 : I bought a lot of March call options on this play and made a huge profit on earnings week. TD Bank did in fact raise their dividend, the first time in years. I made most of my money on the predicted RY move, with the payoff being in the 1000% to 3000% range, depending on chosen entry and exit points. Even bad entries and exits would have been highly profitable on my call. So there was no need to post exact entry and exit points, just follow my advice and cash in the big money.
They're only cheap if you had some kind of guarantee that earnings will come out as expected. I don't think I agree entirely that the markets are "cheap" right now. At best they are reasonably priced. The reason I am still somewhat bullish is because of all the bear tears this rally is causing and the general disbelief that seems quite pervasive regarding to this rally. There's all sorts of reasons why it needs to reverse which is why I think I might go short a bit later than right now.
I'm talking on a valuation basis in the US. This is one of the most forgotten concepts on this site, almost no one looks at earnings and valuations. Its almost always an obsession with economics. I think if you research it is clear that current US markets are cheap, but that they might be "reasonably priced" if you state that there is a deep discount due to economic uncertainty and expectations of falling earnings ( due to QE or any other factor ). In comparism, Canadian markets are far more expensive then US markets on a valuation basis.
Exact metric is not important, late in earnings season there are many analysts that state the current earnings of the S&P 500 on a P/E basis. Ballpark is all you need. People would be surprised how badly the US markets have been lagging earnings growth. Shiller I have no faith in there is some bias in his research and he was predicting market corrections August 2010 based on his numbers. I prefer the KISS approach. Current cash earnings.