Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Blinders and Earplugs - or - The Tebow Factor...

There's this perpetual campaign going on 24/5, 261 (minus a few holidays) days a year - every year... And it's very much like any other political race... Two camps, each efforting to convince the voter that theirs is the correct formula for the nation-at-large...

However this battle doesn't pit elephants against donkeys, this one's between bulls and bears... And the players can be every bit as passionate and preposterous as a presidential candidate promising he'll colonize the moon in eight years, or a sitting president promising mortgages for all...

Listening to an interview with a bear during a bull market is like watching MSNBC half-way into a Republican presidency... Or Fox News in the vice versa... And make no mistake, the stakes are huge for either camp...

The hedge-fund guru got spanked in 2011, goes long (buys stocks) late December, scores an interview on CNBC and offers up ten reasons why losing in stocks this year is about as likely as Ron Paul winning the White House...

Being fair and balanced, CNBC's next segment features an interview with a spokesman for the opposing party; the guru who succumbed last November to the prevailing trend and went short... This gentleman, in panic mode, his professional life in the balance, paints the world red with fear over Red China's slowing growth, with Portugal's pending collapse, with flat first-quarter earnings, and the most frightening factoid of all; the market drops at least ten-percent every time the Broncos trade away their starting QB...

Bottom line folks; the experts have skin in the game - they stand to win if they can get you to act on their advice...

Long-term investment success requires patience, diversification, rebalancing periodically and, most importantly, blinders and earplugs...

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