Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you’re going to be thinking tomorrow.

Glen Beaman

Expert after expert is busy proclaiming that the world is about to come to grinding halt again.

They never seem to let up on pushing this sewage onto the unsuspecting masses. This is a clear example of insanity in action;  mouthing the same thing over and over again with the desperate hope that this time the outcome will be different.  The outcome will not be different this time, at least not yet. These guys should focus on writing fiction for reality seems to elude them completely. For years we have stated (and rightly so) that until the sentiment changes, this market will continue to soar higher and higher.

Here is a small sample of the flood of articles that were pushed out this month. If one simply glances through them, one would almost be compelled to think that the writers shared the same notes.  There is almost no originality in these articles. The theme is the same, just because it’s October the focus is on the disaster aspect of the 1987 crash. Almost no one mentions that it proved to be a monumental buying opportunity. The focus is oh the financial world came to a grinding halt. Only it did not, the only that came to a halt was the rubbish the predecessors of today’s experts were uttering back in 1987.  This reinforces the view that most financial writers have chosen the wrong profession   One word sums all this nonsense “Rubbish.”

• Could the 1987 stock market crash happen again? – Reuters
• Black Monday anniversary: How the 2017 stock market compares with 1987 – Market Watch
• Black Monday: 30 years after 1987 stock market crash… Wall Street raises fears of REPEAT- express.co.uk
• Thursday marks 30th anniversary of the Black Monday stock market crash – courier-journal
• Buy Climax at 30th Anniversary of 1987 Stock Market Crash – Money Show
• The Crash of ’87, From the Wall Street Players Who Lived It – Bloomberg
• Black Monday: Can a 1987-style stock market crash happen again? – USA Today

So are we stating that the stock market will never crash?

No that is not what we are stating.  The market will crash, but for the astute investor, “crash” is the wrong word to use. A strong correction is more likely as most astute investors got into this market a long time ago. It is the crowd that will eventually decide to embrace close to the top that will experience this crash that the experts have been hyping about for years.

This market will experience one strong correction before it crashes, but the moment the Dow sheds 1000 points or more these experts will crawl from the rocks they were hiding under and start screaming bloody murder. To which our response is, please scream as loud as you can; for it will push the markets lower creating a better buying opportunity for us.  This is exactly what we said in Aug of 2015 before Trump won and countless times before and after that.

This market is extremely overbought so a pullback ranging from 1500-3000 points should surprise no one and it certainly should not be construed as a crash but viewed as market releasing a well-deserved dose of steam. To state otherwise, would simply be disingenuous, which seems to be the only real qualification these so-called experts posses

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Market Sentiment indicates that the crowd is far from Ecstatic

The Bullish sentiment has risen somewhat, and the crowd is not as anxious as it was at the beginning of this month or last month, but until the readings indicate this crowd is euphoric, a crash is unlikely. Many people state that most people don’t have money to invest in the markets. We beg to differ; look at whats going on in the Bitcoin market, now that is a market showing some signs of Euphoria; the stock market in comparison is at the lukewarm stage.

Buy The  Fear & Sell The Noise 

The only thing that is going to crash and has been crashing since 2008 is the egos of these “know it all” experts. If any of them had even listened to themselves half of the time; they would have bankrupted themselves several times over. The fact that they are still around chiming the same rubbish is clear proof that they don’t believe a word they are putting to print and therefore neither should you.

 Why Not Try Something New For A Change

Make a list of stocks you would love to own at a discount. When the market lets out a nice dose of steam, instead of fleeing for the hills, you can purchase top quality stocks for a discount

The sheer volume of these articles validates our view that the masses are from bullish and a crash is unlikely.  Until the sentiment or the trend changes,  all strong corrections should be viewed through a bullish lens.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Published courtesy of the Tactical Investor

Mass Hysteria and the coronavirus

What is mass hysteria? A perfect example of the masses leaping before they look. in this instance, the crowd has not even bothered to examine the data closely. If they did they would have seen that the so-called experts are nothing but jackasses in disguise.

Long before this pandemic hit, we stated that central bankers, especially the Fed, was on a mission to take rates towards zero. Imagine if the Fed had lowered interest rates by 150 bases two weeks ago, how people would have reacted.  When the Fed cut rates before the coronavirus attack, experts were quick to label them as being reckless, but now after a 150 basis point cut, they say more has to be done. Notice the ploy here; to do that which the masses abhor, one has to create a situation that distracts their attention. Then offer a solution that is three times as damaging as the previous one and in their desperation to seek safety, they will agree to whatever course of action is laid out.

The system is going to be flooded with so much liquidity that the markets will melt upwards when the media starts to report the data more accurately.  Right now, they talk about the mortality rate without breaking the data down and informing the masses that older individuals are the ones that fall into the high-risk category. Even then, most of them appear to have some other complications already.

Updated mortality rate by age group and nothing much has changed

http://bit.ly/3aNsmpX

Notice how mild it is for those that are under 50, but let’s assume its 1.3%, no data is provided on whether these individuals had any existing conditions. So far, they are using stats to manipulate the data to suit whatever outcome they want to project onto the masses. A more robust approach (which would be relatively easy) would entail listing down any other conditions the patient might have had before becoming infected.

Furthermore, when you look at the data from countries that have sound health systems in place, the overall death rate is quite low. Take a look at Japan, Germany, Denmark, South Korea, Switzerland, Singapore, Taiwan, etc., the total death rate is well below 1.5 and in many cases below one per cent and that’s accounting for all age groups.  For example, Singapore so far as has zero deaths, Taiwan only has one, and so on.

Mass Media Operating from an Alternate reality

The media is pushing theories without all the data, and if you read almost all the stories you will see experts using words, such as may, could, might, but the masses treat these opinions as facts. Try to google the term “is the Coronavirus from the same family as the flu virus: “You won’t find any articles that answer the question directly in the top 10 search results. Instead, you will find a plethora of articles that go on describe how dangerous the new variant of the Coronavirus is. These articles were there before, but now they have been pushed to the bottom pages where no one bothers to look at.

The answer is simple, yes, it’s from the same family, but it’s a more virulent version.  After going through six pages of results, I could barely find a straight answer on Google that discussed only the Coronavirus as it relates to influenza. I had to use duckduckgo.com and only then was I able to find something of value on the first page, but after scrolling down the article in question was I able to find the following info:

Human coronavirus is pretty common throughout the world, according to the CDC. There are seven different types that scientists know of, and many of them cause colds, says infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. However, two newer types—MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV—can cause severe illness. http://bit.ly/2UeuVL5

So why can’t the most popular search engine provide an article in the top 10 results that will answer the question directly? The answer is due to high ranking media sites pushing an enormous amount of opinion based articles, that have replaced articles from lower ranking sites that would have answered the question. Most individuals are not going to sift through pages of data looking for the answer; they stop at the first page and usually look at the top results.

https://youtu.be/V8A0Ji5Cl9I

Mass Hysteria: Panic never leads to a positive outcome

This hysteria based sell-off is producing one of the most significant buying opportunities in decades, more on that later.

In the short-term technical analysis cannot identify support levels because we are dealing with madness, and that is the reason, we added the new standard in the anxiety index.  What exacerbates the situation is that there is very little liquidity, look at the bid and ask price on some options they are unreal, for example, a bid of 1.40 and ask of 5.00.  This provides a few big players with the opportunity to move the markets in whatever direction they see fit.

The only thing that can help stabilize the situation immediately will be one of the following

• The Fed throws the Kitchen and the Kitchen sink at this market and A huge Stimulus package is unveiled
• The press starts to accurately report the news; all they have to go is go to worldmeters.info to get a better take of what is going on
• A new rapid detection test is announced
• The US comes up with concrete measures to rapidly test a large number of individuals. This would be seen as good news because the average death rate is 1.39% and that’s taking all groups into consideration. This is significantly lower than in China and many other nations.
• A vaccine works in clinical trials. The FDA is going to approve the usage of this vaccine extremely fast, however, data has to show that it works even with limited trials.
• A treatment that has a 90% cure rate.,

Mass Hysteria in the markets serves as the foundation of the Next bull market.

when you add in stupidity and ineptitude by the elected officials, what should have been a mild situation turned into a nightmare type scenario.  We are supposedly the most advanced nation on earth, but after the current debacle, one would be hard-pressed to call the US advanced at least when it comes to the medical arena.

What we know for sure, is that a vaccine and a better treatment will be found; it is just a matter of time. As for the press and politicians acting in a sensible manner that’s a hard call.

This chart from the 1940s clearly illustrates that every so-called crash has proved to be a buying opportunity and in the long run, bears are always killed, but the same cannot be said of bulls. Hence, when the trend is up and it is up right now, every strong correction has to be viewed through a bullish lens.

Mass Hysteria is A Contrarian Investor’s Best Friend

Still, the long term outlook is given, more so as this crash started on a note of uncertainty, unlike every previous market crash.

“the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” Baron Rothschild

Losing your head in a crisis is a good way to become the crisis. – C.J. Redwine

Sooner or later comes a crisis in our affairs, and how we meet it determines our future happiness and success. Since the beginning of time, every form of life has been called upon to meet such crisis. – Robert Collier

Successful people recognise crisis as a time for change – from lesser to greater, smaller to bigger. – Edwin Louis Cole

It’s not always easy to do what’s not popular, but that’s where you make your money. Buy stocks that look bad to less careful investors and hang on until their real value is recognized. I’ve never bought a stock unless, in my view, it was on sale. Buy on the cannons and sell on the trumpets John Neff

In order to win as a contrarian, you need the right timing and you have to put on a position in the appropriate size. If you do it too small, it’s not meaningful. If you do it too big, you can get wiped out if your timing is slightly off. The process requires courage, commitment and an understanding of your own psychology Michael Steinhardt

I will tell you how to become rich…Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful. Warren Buffett

To succeed as a contrarian, you must recognize what the crowd believes, have concrete justification for why the majority is wrong, and have the patience and conviction to stick with what is, by definition, an unpopular bet. Whitney  Tilson

Humans are prone to herd because it is always warmer and safer in the middle of the herd. Indeed, our brains are wired to make us social animals. We feel the pain of social exclusion in the same parts of the brain where we feel real physical pain. So being a contrarian is a little bit like having your arm broken on a regular basis. James Montier

There are many who give advice, but few that offer guidance. Anonymous

Our all-time favourite

To buy when others are despondently selling and to sell when others are euphorically buying takes the greatest courage, but provides the greatest profit. Bull markets are born in pessimism, grow on scepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria. The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell. If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd. Sir John Templeton

Stock Market Outlook Going Forward

We have moved deeper into the madness zone, and neutral sentiment has dropped to levels not seen for years. It is trading at 13, but bullish sentiment while below its historical average is still quite high, it would be ideal for it to drop below 24. Bearish sentiment continues to trend higher, and that’s a good sign.  As things stand right now, we are close to another “mother of all buy signals” that would match that of 1987 and 2008. Our indicators just need to dip slightly lower into the oversold range.

The trend as per our trend indicator is positive which suggest that every pullback ranging from mild to wild should be embraced.

Courtesy of Tactical Investor

Mass hysteria: An epidemic of the mind?

An outbreak of fatal dancing fits among members of the same community, men suddenly gripped by the sickening fear of losing their genital organs, and teenagers having mysterious symptoms after watching an episode of their favorite TV series — these are all instances of what we often refer to as “mass hysteria.”
“They danced together, ceaselessly, for hours or days, and in wild delirium, the dancers collapsed and fell to the ground exhausted, groaning and sighing as if in the agonies of death. When recuperated, they […] resumed their convulsive movements.”

This is a description of the epidemic of “dancing plague” or “dancing mania” as given by Benjamin Lee Gordon in Medieval and Renaissance Medicine.

These events were spontaneous outbursts of uncontrollable dancing motions that gripped people in communities across Europe in the Middle Ages.

Those affected would often reportedly be unable to stop dancing until they were so worn out and exhausted that they died. These events are typically cited as some of the first known instances of what would come to be referred to as “mass hysteria.”

Mass hysteria is a phrase that is used so often and so imprecisely to refer to anything from giving in to fashion fads to participating in riots and raves that it has become something of a fluid concept, synonymous with anything with a negative connotation that involves the participation of a large group of people. Full Story

The Mystery of Mass Hysteria

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 18, 2012 — A few months ago, six teenagers at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School in upstate New York began exhibiting tics and verbal outbursts that resembled some of the classic symptoms of Tourette syndrome. The students — all girls, of whom there are now a dozen — were shaking and jerking uncontrollably, sometimes to the point of not being able to speak.

Parents and school officials were understandably alarmed and launched a full-scale investigation to determine whether environmental substances in any of the buildings could have triggered the problem. Thus far, however, all reports have come back clean.

Now a doctor who is treating some of the girls has come forward with a surprising explanation: mass hysteria.

“It’s happened before, all around the world,” said Laszlo Mechtler, MD, the neurologist who diagnosed the teens. “It’s a rare phenomena.”

Mass Hysteria Throughout History
Not that rare, as it turns out. Mass hysteria — in which various people in a common group (such as students within a school) spontaneously exhibit an outbreak of physical symptoms caused by psychological stress — has been documented frequently over the ages, dating all the way back to the 14th century. In fact, according to a report from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, there were at least 70 distinct outbreaks between 1973 and 1993 alone, 34 of which occurred in the United States. Schools, workplaces, and small communities were the most common settings of these events Full Story

Risk and Opportunity; Investing is analogous to war

One needs to understand the difference between a battle and a war. You can lose several battles but still win the war, or win many battles and still end up losing the war. It comes down to how much damage you incur as opposed to losing or winning the battle. If you minimise the damage, you can lose several battles in a row, retreat and regroup and come back and win the war.

Bullish and Bearish cycles are akin to battles fought in a War

Each cycle should be considered a war, and as long as you win the war, the individual battles are meaningless. The mass mindset focuses on each battle, students of mass psychology focus on the war.

When it comes to investing one can experience extended periods of success, where the markets do exactly what they are supposed to do, but the equation must balance and sooner or later the market will go through a phase of turbulence. In these turbulent times, like the current one, we will experience more losses, but when the turbulence vanishes, the win ratio and the percentage in gains will be far higher than experienced during the phase of turbulence. Until October we had a remarkably long winning streak.

Every bull market goes through one shakeout (strong pullback phase)

One never know when that will occur exactly. A shakeout is not the same as a market putting in a long-term top.  This is done to get the masses to alter their perception. The big players need someone to sell these stocks to before they cash out.  The masses eventually buy this strategy, and when they do, the top is usually close at hand. Once again, look at Bitcoin, everyone was happy when it traded past 10K, they turned ecstatic when it broke past 15K and then they assumed that nothing would hold it back.

During this shakeout stage, it is essential to have stops in place and deploy one’s money at different intervals. Nobody can change this order. No one can tell with certainty when the markets will experience a stronger than normal pullback because this market is as manipulated as they come; after 2008, free market forces ceased to exist.  However, if the trend is positive, then those pullbacks have to be viewed through a bullish lens.

The following inferences are therefore possible:

In times of risk, the masses seek to take on more risk as opposed to taking on less risk. The masses beg for the opportunity to buy low and sell high, but when the moment finally arrives (and the risk factor is much lower) they baulk, and their argument is always the same “it is different this time, the market is going to crash, and we need to bail out”. However, they never put forth the same argument when the markets are racing upwards, and analysts all over the place are issuing insane targets such as $1 million, and they now assume the next stop is the sun or another galaxy. Instead, the next stop is usually “hell”.

Run when the Masses Turn Euphoric

When the masses believe they have found the next best thing to white bread, its time to head for the hills. Case and point Bitcoin. Throughout its fall, the masses remained bullish, and despite the heavy beating it has already taken experts are still issuing insane targets even now when Bitcoin is trading below 5K, which means that Bitcoin the odds of it hitting 3K are far higher than 15K.

Imran Wasim, a financial analyst at AMSYS Group, told News BTC he was far from downbeat, predicting cryptocurrency will become “more mainstream” in 2018. https://bit.ly/2DZs7fo

Bitcoin Price Forecast: Tim Draper Predicts Bitcoin Will Be Worth More Than $100,000.

Llew Claasen who is the executive director of Bitcoin foundation recently stated that he expected Bitcoin to hit $ 40,000 by the end of this very year. He further added that 90% of the cryptocurrencies will actually fall. https://bit.ly/2FHTVX0

Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors, lowered his year-end target to $15,000 from $25,000 — still well above where the cryptocurrency was trading on Friday.

A key driver was bitcoin’s “break-even” point, the level at which mining costs match the trading price. That level is down to $7,000 from an earlier estimate of $8,000 for the S9 mining machine by Bitmain, according to Fundstrat’s data science team. Based on that, Lee estimates that fair value for bitcoin would be roughly 2.2 times the new $7,000 break-even price. https://cnb.cx/2BhvnQD

Alexander V. van Dijl, Financial expert:

At the beginning of this year I predicted a bitcoin value of 150.000. While that seems like a lot today, I believe some firm price movements will take place in the (very) near future. Something big will happen, perhaps a large retailer will accept bitcoin, perhaps adult advertising will accept bitcoin as payment. Something big will happen that will cause the price to skyrocket again. 150.000 is my prediction for January 1st

Eric Brown, Founder and CEO of Aliant Payment Systems:

My Bitcoin price prediction for 1 January 2019 is $23,000.We were practically at this price once, and we know what it takes to get it back there. We are very much in the infancy of this type of currency, and as technology grows, so does the value of the currency. The future is technology and Bitcoin is the currency of that technology.

Sam Russell, Co-Founder / EVP Strategy and Innovation at WORBLI:

If the fundamentals on Bitcoin positively change in September with the upcoming proposals for an ETF approval by the SEC, we can expect buying pressure to increase pushing price up to previous market structure highs of $11,400 testing resistance in that area. Should that happen, Bitcoin would effectively change in trend. My guess — 17,000 USD https://bit.ly/2wJoUu8

The sensible thing to do is to implement a strategy that works both in good times and turbulent times, and that is what we are doing.

Courtesy of Tactical Investor

Random Views on Risk and Opportunity

The First Risk and Opportunity in Active Investing

What is the most significant risk in quant (and all active) investing today?

The First Moment (the mean)

The Second Moment (under-estimating tracking error)

The Third Moment (skewness, left tails, crash risk)

Mis-specified risk model (hidden factor biases, factors ‘eating’ alphas)

Sub-optimal portfolio construction methodology (error maximization)

Higher than expected transaction costs

Individual stock risk

Quants typically chose 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

In my view, the most important risk in active investing is #1: The First Moment.

This is the no-alpha risk = strategy does not outperform the benchmark = the long-term mean <=0

The lack of alpha in the industry is not news, and many are trying their best, but I believe the reason more effort is not producing better results is because we are trying to solve the alpha risk as an engineering problem rather than an architectural one.

Today’s quants are already very well equipped to deal with risks 2 through 7. These risks have engineering-friendly convergent solutions. 50 years ago, some of these other risks might have been at the top of my list, but after decades of advances in these areas, these risks are much less problematic than the First Moment Risk (as a side: in total portfolio mandates from the asset owner’s viewpoint, Crash Risk #3 is still very much alive and real). Full Story

What Is Opportunity Cost?

Opportunity costs represent the benefits an individual, investor or business misses out on when choosing one alternative over another. While financial reports do not show opportunity cost, business owners can use it to make educated decisions when they have multiple options before them.

Because by definition they are unseen, opportunity costs can be easily overlooked if one is not careful. Understanding the potential missed opportunities foregone by choosing one investment over another allows for better decision-making.
How to Calculate Opportunity Cost
The formula for calculating an opportunity cost is simply the difference between the expected returns of each option. Say that you have option A, to invest in the stock market hoping to generate capital gain returns. Option B is to reinvest your money back into a business expecting that newer equipment will increase production efficiency, leading to lower operational expenses and a higher profit margin.

Assume the expected return on investment in the stock market is 12 percent over the next year, and your company expects the equipment update to generate a 10 percent return over the same period. The opportunity cost of choosing the equipment over the stock market is (12% – 10%), which equals two percentage points. In other words, by investing in the business, you would forgo the opportunity to earn the higher return.

Opportunity cost analysis also plays a crucial role in determining a business’s capital structure. Full Story

Use The 50-Day Moving Average To Pinpoint Opportunity Or Risk

An ax can be either a useful tool or a dangerous weapon. In stock charts, the 50-day moving average has a similar dual nature.

The 50-day moving average takes a stock’s prior 50 daily price closes and averages them. Do this every day in an upward-trending stock, and you’ll get a line on a chart that runs below the stock’s price bars while smoothing out the jumps and buckles.

The line serves a startling number of uses. When a stock is basing, a cup base with more than half its bulk above rather than below the line is a sign of health. Another sign of a stock’s strength: a flat base that finds “support” at its 50-day line.

What is support? Institutional investors often use the 50-day or 10-week line as a reference point, stepping in to add shares to their positions when a stock pulls back to the moving average. This buying creates upward pressure — or price support — to help keep the stock’s prices above that moving average.

This is why rising stocks often rebound from their 50-day lines, turning brief pullbacks into follow-on buying opportunities. It is also why 50-day and 10-week moving averages tend to cradle advances that can run across many months.

On the dangerous side, a rallying stock that collapses below 50-day support in heavy volume is often sending a sell signal. Once below that line, institutional investors may use the 50-day line to mark a sell level. Full Story

Americans Are Scared Of Investing and the question is why

The answer to this question is simple; the focus on the wrong factors such as news which is akin to gossip, political rhetoric, advice from experts (more like jackasses) and a plethora of other equally meaningless reasons.  Let’s look at some of these factors individually.  We will repeat this again, but the key to all this is understanding the key concepts of Mass Psychology; the most important of which is that one should never allow one’s emotions to do the talking.

From a psychological perspective, polarisation is a positive development as long as the trend is up.  When people are driven by emotions (especially people in power), they cannot think clearly, and their only ambition is to destroy their opponent.

When one cannot think clearly, one is destined to lose the war; it is just a matter of time. Those that can remain calm in such periods usually stand to walk away with the most significant gains.   Individuals from both parties will be going for the jugular, and some of these attacks will temporarily shock the markets. At the Tactical Investor, we embrace shock type events (as long as the trend is up) and the stronger the deviation, the better the opportunity.

Focusing on the Fear Factor Will Always Lead To Losses

Therefore, do not focus on the fear factor, but try to direct your attention to the “opportunity factor” if another shock type event hits the markets. The trend is up and showing no signs of weakening. Therefore we must treat anything the media attempts to market as a disaster, as an opportunity factor. The media is an extension of the mass mindset. For any con, you need at least two elements, a con artist and a bunch of idiots.  An observer is not part of this equation for he/she does not equate with the conman or the idiot, the observers function is to observe, and then use the data to plot the most favourable path.

Take this as an early warning that should the media jackasses start pushing another B.S story, instead of panicking, one should break out of a bottle of champagne, and as the masses panic calmly sip on that champagne and build a list of strong stocks one always wanted to purchase. For those allergic to work, the option is simple; sit back and relax, for we always view stock market crashes as opportune moments when the trend is positive.

The masses are still too nervous for this Stock Market Bull To Die

Looking at the data above, the most compelling piece of information is the number of individuals in the neutral camp has not declined significantly and when you combine the number of individuals in the bearish camp, the total still adds up to 62.  The” toothless wonders” of the world still outnumber the bulls, and that is a very bullish factor.  Let us not forget that the masses are still sitting on a vast pile of cash; they are waiting for better times to buy, having forgotten that the best time to buy just eclipsed them about a month ago.

These sagacious men will once again buy close to the next stop and then wonder why their gameplan did not lead to a positive outcome.   The best time to buy is when the masses are in panic mode, and when one feels far from certain about the future of the markets; certainty is the secret word for failure when it comes to the stock markets.

This bull market is unlike any other; before 2009, one could have relied on extensive technical studies to more or less call the top of a market give or take a few months; after 2009, the game plan changed and 99% of these traders/experts failed to factor this into the equation. Technical analysis as a standalone tool would not work as well as did before 2009 and in many cases would lead to a faulty conclusion.  Long story short, there are still too many people pessimistic (experts, your average Joes and everything in between) and until they start to embrace this market, most pullbacks ranging from mild to wild will falsely be mistaken for the big one.  Market Update Feb 28, 2019

Never Allow Fear To Take Over

One should remember this paragraph every time the urge to panic starts to rise; no bull market has ever ended on a note of fear or anxiety. Despite the media trying to create a new narrative to prove otherwise for the past several years; they have failed miserably, proving that news, in general, should either be treated as rubbish or viewed through a humorous lens.   Americans  fear all the things they should not & embrace nonsense which they should ignore

Random Views on Why Americans Are Scared Of Investing

Millennials are afraid to invest in the stock market

“New survey data suggests the ‘Someday Scaries’ could be” a factor holding young people back, Ally reports. About 61 percent of adults say they find investing in the stock market “scary or intimidating.” And millennials feel significantly more intimidated than Baby Boomers or those in Generation X, it says.

“The way to mitigate risk is through diversification. Investors should look at investing offers that provide a diversified portfolio with a balance based on their overall investing goals. In general, a portfolio that contains a variety of ETFs, bonds and cash is a great place to start,” he says.

“Start with a savings account that will give you a competitive rate of return and pay yourself first by putting whatever you can, even if it’s just a small amount, from each paycheck into that savings account.

“History has proven again and again that the key to achieving financial security is to start saving and investing early,” he says. “What people need most is to face the ‘Someday Scaries’ head on and get started, taking one small step at a time.” Full Story

People Are Still Scared of Investing

Only about 4 in 10 Americans and only 1 in 3 Millennials have money in the stock market. The most common justification – that those who don’t invest simply don’t have the money – doesn’t cover all the bases.

What governs the behaviour of those who have the money and choose not to invest in fear.

To a seasoned market participant, the fact that everyone with the means to invest doesn’t invest is baffling, but the implications are far direr than just missed opportunities.

Many Americans’ financial futures are uncertain, not because they don’t have the money, but because they don’t know what to do with it. Innovations and market events of the last decade haven’t dramatically improved financial literacy or investor confidence either. Full Story

Here’s why some Americans can’t invest in the market

For the rest of us, pay remains stagnant, with recent — and not exactly robust — nominal gains being erased by inflation. At the same time, life can feel increasingly unaffordable. Child care is staggeringly expensive, while the percentage of Americans with employer-provided health insurance who need to meet a four-figure deductible is rising rapidly, no doubt a factor in why one of three campaigns on the depressingly omnipresent GoFundMe is medical fundraisers. Four out of ten people say they couldn’t come up with $400 in an emergency. Consumer sentiment is falling even as retail sales increase. New business formation is falling dramatically. The government safety net continues to deteriorate.

Finally, too many are dependent on the markets for their retirements. Few workers outside of government employees currently enjoy access to pensions, with the result being that they are bound to use 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts to attempt to provide for their post-work lives. The money in these accounts is mostly invested in the stock market. Even if the amounts in question are not exactly riches (half of those invested in the stock market have a sum total of $40,000 or less in play), it is enough to create a palpable sense of fear among many anytime the stock market indexes swoon — a “heads I don’t win, tails I lose” situation. Full Story

 Survey finds that Many Americans Afraid of Investing

More than 1 in 3 Americans surveyed are afraid of investing. 43% of females surveyed are afraid of investing in the stock market compared to 31% of males, according to a new CreditDonkey.com survey

Fear of the unknown will stop most anyone in their tracks, even if a potential reward awaits them. In a new survey of more than 1,200 Americans by CreditDonkey.com, 46% of respondents revealed they are afraid of death and 37% of respondents said they are afraid of investing in the stock market.

Some 73% feel investing in the stock market is gambling while 31% think the stock market is rigged.

“It’s almost never profitable,” one respondent wrote. “The chances you’ll profit are the same as scratching a lottery ticket.”

Another respondent claimed the market is “rigged to benefit those already in power, the elite 1%.”  Full Story

Follow the Trend and ignore the noise for the trend is all that matters, the rest is rubbish

Courtesy of Tactical Investor