it has always been my contention that the public MUST lose interest in the financial markets before the bottom is reached. it appears that by monitoring the financial state of the various on-line brokers like etrade, ameritrade, scott trade, et al one could ascertain "public" interest. after seeing numerous big dollar commercials it seems like they are thriving. can anyone direct me to further information ?? any thoughts on this theory ???
Where I live, Holland, there's a lot of complaining of the financial industry on the unwillingness of the public to invest in equities. For a half year or so they have increased their advertising efforts considerably, to no avail untill now. Personnally I think, we will go much lower before we see the bottom, as the Japan-scenario is ever becoming more likely.
No one cares about the markets anymore. Just last summer I was bombarded with questions at family gatherings, these days we talk about the family. I think most people have lost interest, but there might be enough who haven't, who are waiting for another bounce to pull out. Another fact that makes me believe we've put in a bottom, is that everyone is looking for this rally to be a head fake.
I agree with your theory also and it seems to me we have a long way to go yet. I think we still see a massive sell off that scares people so thouroughly that they swear off equities and turn their backs on the markets. I think it will become a situation of mass apathy by the public and will result in years of low volatility and volume. There is such a massive amount of excess that needs to be wrung out of the system before a true bull market can emerge. Just a pet theory, and as an equities trader I sure hope I'm wrong.
If you read alot of the posts on this message board, everyone is thinking that we need to go lower before we can go higher. Am i the only one that thinks this maybe a signal that we have bottomed. As for volatility, the indexes are moving around, but individual stocks have very short lived moves these days, so we may have entered the period of low volatility already. Just my opnion.