Rube. I had thought about putting on a position short, but the skepticism this rally is being met with is just endless. I measure this in different ways, and any way you measure it it just doesn't go away. No way you can short into such pervasive skepticism. Article on this, that confirms what I'm seeing: The Wall of Worry Commentary: Advisers have grown more skeptical in recent days -- a good sign
People grossly overstate the value of this "sentiment" heuristic, imo. It is not what comes out of your mouth that matters, it is what the market records you doing in reality. Open Interest and Put/Call ratio are the one true indicator, and intraday things like Gainers vs Losers, TIKI and TICK, that records these things. What is of value imo is to know how many people are exposed to being long and or short, and in what proportion to their "cash" they have left to expose to a market direction. The rule that markets bottom when there is no one left to sell or markets top when there is no one left to buy is far far closer to the correct heuristic, but even these rules are terribly flawed. If you want my "sentiment", there is still tons of liquidity as far as the stock market is concerned. "FV" tugs at the stock market in one direction, and this liquidity tugs in the other. As long as IRs are zero there is almost no end in sight to people chasing yield anywhere but bonds (or simply that stock markets rise in reaction to inflation, hence the "reflation trade", which no one wants to acknowledge). As soon as the FED lifts it's finger once, watch out.
yes, i think there is skepticism in the market. small stops, etc. I have this theory of manipulation. Large manipulator(s) must be paid. Now if market reverses.... there is no profit potential as one has to sell size to convicend buyers to make it worthvile to drive market down. So, the other option is no move or move up. As it is going up there is surprise in making i guess... I thnk the reason people will bet with conviction that things will go even higher coming up and not fully visible yet. therefore market will not go down yet.
I don't believe in manipulation of large SIF indeces. Cash is chasing yield. Simple as that. Traders make it as expensive as possible for institutions by bidding up the price before insitutions can buy, and then selling to those same insitutions when the spiggot opens. Institutions (or the managers running pension funds etc) mostly don't care, it is not their money, they just have to look good so they can continue to put bacon on their table at home. It is not that complicated or evil as you suggest. But as soon as money managers are given a _real_ choice between equities and bonds (or other asset classes like real estate), it is going to get quite interesting. You may say, well, there is no real choice now, so why isn't the stock market even much higher? Because the stock market cannot handle the 100s of billions of dollars that you can throw at the bond market. So pension funds etc realize that investing in the stock market is walking a fine line between affecting your own markets, all the while walking on rice paper.
There was an interview of Taleb that someone posted here in some thread a while back where he said he had spent some time in the pits in Chicago and realized that market makers were always putting on little squeezes, and these were crucial to price-setting. I've never been an MM, so I don't know if he's right or not. I do know that it seems that way in larger time frames in the larger market, and as a result I always try to use ways of gauging where the money is committed, because then what will happen is that if you squeeze a bit in the other direction, it all comes rushing over to your side, because, in the end, fear is a stronger emotion than greed. A longer way of saying what you said re traders vs institutions, I guess. So I have my ways of measuring this stuff, and what I see matches what Hulbert says in that article: as soon as there's some movement up, it's met by extreme skepticism. That's a classic formula for a bull market. I had thought the shorts and bears would finally throw in the towel this EOM/EOQ, but that is simply not happening. So, the trend continues to be up, and will continue to be up until these guys are finally squeezed so hard they beg, plead, even scream for mercy.
a am talking from experience. Created above explanation of speculative world based on screen experience. One part of moves can surely be explained by that. analysing my early 100+ FX trades realised that I ALWAYS exited on low of reaction in a TOBE 4x risk winning trade. Was basing my exits on emotions only. and have proven that statistically it is impossible that emotions play no role. Actually play major role. These MS computer algorithms are based on that, i believe. Learned now to use that thinking in my favour using myself as simulator if you like.