Quote from chanster:
thats bs and propaganda from the media to make people think theres bears so they keep buying.market vane and investors intelligence are showing some of the highest bullish % in the last few years. put to call ratio is average and showing no bearishness and the vix is 10.show me a person that comes on cnbc or fox thats bearish? i've seen none.its funny if there's 5 bears around then that means its bullish for stocks. whens theres 1 million bulls its also bullish. the same talking heads that are telling you to buy now were telling us to load at naz 5000 and never forget that.
I agree and disagree. Yes, I think most of the ET bears are looking for another line of work. The posting on ET the last 2 weeks has virtually come to a halt. I would bet half this message board took a pretty big hit and close to that probably threw in the towel. I think Nitro blowing out was a big tell.
However, I disagree that there are no bears left. The macro bears are still there. And by macro I mean the bears that are short on fundamentals, not technicals. All the bears that think Gold is going to 2000 are still short equities. All the bears that think we are going to have runaway inflation that will cripple the economy are still short. All the bears that think the Dollar is going to zero are still short equities.
I talk to some of these guys on a regular basis and they have a lot more staying power then the avg ETer, not to mention they are in other instruments that have performed well such as long Gold or short dollar. Let's not forget the oil is going to $120 guys. These guys firmly believe that oil is going to put us in a global depression. They are still short equities as well.
And then we have the housing collapse guys. They are certainly not long equities.
It's very myopic for people on ET to think that just because all the pikers on this board have been wiped out that the entire bear community across the world has also been wiped out.
Not to mention, one of my favorite indicators I like to look actually shows the little guy is not that bullish either. The ISEE which is by far the best sentiment indicator out there, is an inverse put to call ratio. Only it removes all BD orders and it measures open only transactions. In other words, the piker index. It oscillates between 100 and 200 on avg with extreme readings as low as 60 to 70 and as high as 250 to 270. The higher the reading, the more bearish you would want to be. It successfully called the selloff in May almost to the day. It also called the low of the May/June selloff to the day when it got down to 63 or so.
When this ISEE gets above 200, that's when I would start to get worried for the longs. In reality, the major tops have been closer to 250, but nothing wrong with getting out early. The problem is we have drifted to the high 100's but quickly pulled back everytime. This means the little guy is still buying puts. The ISEE went out at 114 yesterday, which believe it or not is starting to become very bullish again. If we break 100, and I doubt we will, but if we do, I would not want to be short this market.
Here's the link to the ISEE.
http://www.iseoptions.com/marketplace/statistics/sentiment_index.asp