5/31/2007

Perma Bears and History

“in February 1948, the communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square.
Gottwald was flanked by comrades with Clementis standing close to him. It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald’s head.
The propaganda section made hundreds of thousands of copies of the photograph taken on the balcony where Gottwald, in a fur hat and surrounded by his comrades, spoke to the people. On that balcony the history of Communist Bohemia began. Every child knew that photograph, from seeing it on posters and in schoolbooks and museums.
Four years later Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and , of course, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony -. Where Clementis stood , there is only the bare palace wall. Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottswald head.”- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera


Since the 2002 bottom, the market has been rallying, interspersed with occasional corrections. One permanent feature of the advance has been the perma bears insisting on this 5 year rally being just a counter trend rally in larger bear market.Various hypothesis and arguments have been advanced by the bears at various stages of the move. All of them have proven wrong.

Now the great race to erase the history will start. Bears after bears will crawl out qualifying or subtly changing their past calls. Some will just air brush their past hypothesis and calls. Just watch the fun. After all at some stage after being wrong consistently for five years even the most ardent fans will start questioning the logic and threaten to quit.

5 comments:

Matt said...

Great post!

Pradeep Bonde said...

The bearish propaganda machine thrives on airbrushing past history.
What are you going to tell new subscribers, hey look at my " Big Picture Analysis" for last 5 years, see how it is spectacularly wrong. By the way I charge 1000 Dollars per month for this piece of brilliance. So there will be subtle air brushing of past calls and analysis.

Unknown said...

Give credit to the permabulls like Carl Futia. We have taken a lot of heat.

There are many blogs that post the "I don't know" which I think is also unacceptable if a blogger is attempting to teach others. If they can't even call the market right, should they really be attempting to educate the public on stocks?

Pradeep Bonde said...

As long as the bearish bloggers continue to dominate the popularity ranking in blogosphere , we are unlikely to see market top. There might be corrections in market.

When bullish bloggers dominate top 10 ranking then you should start worrying. Currently the top 10 list is dominated by bears.

That is the best sentiment indicator.

Marlyn Trades said...

Brilliant - just brilliant!

You have a knack my friend - a real knack.