The old saying from our friend Jeff Hirsch goes, "Buy in October and Get yourself Sober".
Did you listen?
And it's not so much about literally buying blindly in October, and more about the fact that stocks tend to end their seasonal corrections around that time, before going on to rally into the end of the year.
And that's exactly what we've seen.
Here is the 4-year seasonal cycle, which of course, suggested strength in equities since mid-term elections last year. And we certainly saw it.
Then the Q3 correction came and went, again all perfectly normal.
And finally that year end strength, which of course we're seeing:
Another $73 Billion came in last week, as investors decide they would rather sit in cash collecting an inflation-adjusted, after tax profit of around 1%.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq is up 50% from the October lows last year. The S&P500 is up a humble 30%.
Technology stocks are up 60%.
Bitcoin is up 160% this year.
But investors are deciding to close their eyes to the current market trends and, for some reason, hoping it goes away.
“If people weren’t wrong so often, we wouldn’t be so rich” - Charles Thomas Munger
R.I.P. Legend.
Charlie, of course known for his fundamental analysis alongside Warren Buffett all these years, was a closet Technician at heart.
His analysis of human behavior was top notch, particularly misbehavior and stupid behavior.
His comment to Warren about the reason they were so rich was because people are so often wrong, was spot on.
If you've been paying attention, we use this to our advantage quite a bit.
For example, twelve months ago Wall Street strategists forecasted an outright fall for stocks in 2023, the first time this century that they had predicted a loss...