Wall Street: Bulls Jinxing The Market

You can't swing a dead cat these days without hitting somebody or something touting how the stock market is going to the moon. That makes Wall Street traders nervous.

Over the weekend, Barron's ran a cover story called "Enter the Bull," with a big cover graphic reading "Dow 15,000."

This follows comments recently from Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock Inc., the world's biggest asset manager, saying investors should be "100%" in stocks. Slate's Matthew Yglesias has declared this "recovery winter." Business Insider blogger Joe Weisenthal has been tweeting and posting that this is "morning in America." Even famously gloomy economist Nouriel Roubini thinks the stock market is in for more gains, following a 23 percent run-up in the S&P 500 since last October.

All of this agreement about the awesomeness of the stock market gives contrarian traders on Wall Street the heebie-jeebies.

"Consider this a public service announcement in the form of a plea to all bloggers, financial journalists, tweeters, etc," wrote Fusion Analytics financial advisor and blogger Joshua Brown Monday morning: "Please Stop Saying Things That Will Cause The Market To Top."

"On a trading desk you could get your ass kicked for that kind of calling-your-shot Babe Ruthery," he added.

Meanwhile, Stocktwits founder and CEO Howard Lindzon sees all of the bullishness as a sign that things are a lot closer to the top than to the bottom:

"Back in October they were nowhere to be found and their silence...made things ripe for a bottom," he wrote on Monday. "I am not expecting the end of the world on our next big selloff, but it sure feels closer to a top than it does to a place where I want to be long 100 percent equities."

Comments

[vinyl1]

09:39 AM on 02/14/2012

Too high to buy, too low to sell. Sometimes you have to stand pat and just collect your dividends.

Opportunities will come, now is the time to build up cash.

[Virulancer]

01:15 PM on 02/14/2012

This should be a song.

[Plymouth Pilgrim]

09:02 AM on 02/14/2012

Buy stocks my friends. Put all your money in stocks. The prices of stocks are high right now. If we can suck people into investing, we can make a fortune when we crash the market. So keep up the hype, lets take it all this time. You know that after November, when Obama is re-elected and democrats take both houses, we won't have the ability to screw the middle class again.

[Rosalee Harris]

08:18 AM on 02/14/2012

These folks would LOVE LOVE for Mitt to be the Next President. So they can run roughshod and do anything they please.

[TheAntiOkie]

08:12 AM on 02/14/2012

When a big time investor says that everyone should be 100% into stocks, you know it's not a wise thing - they are just trying to get all of the people who are stupid enough to listen to their lies to put as much money in as they can so that the big time investor can steal as much of it as humanly possible VERY SOON.

[TheAntiOkie]

08:08 AM on 02/14/2012

WELL - all it takes to be ALLOWED to post here is to use a browser for wen the code writers are CAPABLE of writing partially optimized code.  Obviously Firefox is not in your area of expertise.  Perhaps going back to school to learn your craft instead of being a place-holding check-collector instead of an employee who actually earns their pay check.

[AlanBannacheck]

07:39 AM on 02/14/2012

Remember last year when in one week the stock market went down, up, down, and up again? I would worry more what it will look like five years from now,

[Juan Carlos Mescalero]

07:13 AM on 02/14/2012

Wall Street. The only place in the world where cutting capacity and firing people make you more attractive.

[Virulancer]

01:19 PM on 02/14/2012

Silicon Valley, Motorcity, etc.

If you can trim fat and become a lean, mean, success machine in whatever enterprise you are in: losing weight, running a fortune 500 company, getting better gas mileage, etc...isn't that always the more attractive avenue?

[LVNVprog]

03:00 AM on 02/14/2012

Time to Re-Implement a Financial Transactions Tax to help Balance the Budget and hire Thousands of Monitors needed to bring Transparency to corrupt Wall Street Corporations.

[Virulancer]

01:21 PM on 02/14/2012

Budget should not balanced, and probably could not be balanced, in our deficit system. Restoring confidence in the markets though will definitely bring our economic statistics to much more manageable numbers.

[Drosco]

11:31 PM on 02/13/2012

Bears begin making case now. Buy in Jan sell in May...then the bears can unleash wrath upon the street all the way back to 9000?

[stargazer13]

10:43 PM on 02/13/2012

the year of commodities

half way mark

stock market is inflating and over speculating again

[wtf is this]

10:25 PM on 02/13/2012

Lets see... Dow hit 10K about 2000, may hit 13K soon in 2012. Just rough math, thats 3 or 4% per year? Yah... that bull is raging in this century.

[Almondo]

09:32 PM on 02/13/2012

Madeoff's head still belongs on the back end of that bull.

[beerbagger]

09:03 PM on 02/13/2012

Everybody's a winner. Step right up...

[Steppinwolf]

12:15 PM on 02/14/2012

I can smell the cotton candy and elephant dung. Faved for flashback and fanned for being a beer swilling llama-rooster.

[beerbagger]

02:51 AM on 02/15/2012

it takes all kinds don't-cha know...

Now if we could only get Oprah to host Congressional hearings people might get involved.

[Querent]

08:54 PM on 02/13/2012

Oh, my. How persuasive.

[Steve Rockett]

08:50 PM on 02/13/2012

We are in the midst of the biggest bull market in the history of the country, but you must do your research and invest, not trade. There have been two corrections so far, and I epect one every thousand points or every jagged line in Europe.

[Jon LoGotti]

11:52 PM on 02/13/2012

Hmm so how much has stocks returned in the last 10 yrs? What about real returns instead of nominal returns, that is returns when measured against the dollar, the currency that is invested. Returns are negative and stocks have only risen because returns on bonds are so low due to 0% rates. Once rates inevitably rise, well see how well stocks perform. Of course until then, in this unconventional environment with rates at 0%, who would expect stocks to not outperform when you get negative returns on bonds. Earnings forcasts have been lowered this year and well see how Europe responds. Don't forget what happened last year. Stocks did very well until they didn't in May when they peaked and down from there. Keep buying those dips

[Steve Rockett]

12:39 AM on 02/14/2012

sound thinking

[vinyl1]

09:40 AM on 02/14/2012

Depends on which stocks you buy. I have made plenty of money in the past 10 years, despite some losses.

Don't buy dips, buy crashes. It's OK to sell puts on dips if you're into that kind of thing.