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Why Are Investors So Scared?

April 24, 2023

You want to talk about trends?

The biggest trend I see is that stocks keep going up in price, but investors are more pessimistic than ever.

I don't understand...

What are people so angry about? Why are they so scared?

Barron's latest Big Money poll shows that out of the 130 managers polled only 6% of their clients were bullish.

lol 6%?

This is comes after less than 1% of J.P. Morgan's investors think the S&P500 closes higher this year.

What's with these people?

Stock prices keep moving higher.

That's what stocks do in bull markets - they go up.

This is officially Month #11 of this bull market, and you can see here how Berkshire Hathaway is acting accordingly, closing the week at the highest levels in almost a year:

And all this while the United States continues to underperform.

Remember, it's not the bull market's fault that your country is underperforming.

Look at the rest of Developed Markets already making new 52-week highs as the U.S. gets left behind:

$EFA is loaded with Japanese and European Equities.

We regularly talk about Europe around here as Denmark, France, UK and others have already been making new all-time highs.

And now here's the Japan ETF also making new all-time highs:

This is called "Breadth Expansion".

More and more stocks, and more and more countries going up.

This is mathematical evidence of accumulation, not distribution.

Could we now, all of a sudden, start to see massive distribution and a new bear market kick off this week?

Absolutely.

But over the past 10+ months have the majority of stocks been going up or have the majority of stocks been going down?

The answer is up.

So is this just a 10-month long "bear market rally", or has this been a bull market all along, like I've continually said it's been?

Either way, stocks have been going up, not down. So who cares what you call it.

The bigger question is what happens next?

Do stocks continue to go up, because asset prices trend, and that's just the higher probability outcome?

Or do stocks just randomly stop going up, turn around, and initiate new downtrends?

We tried to answer that question together on last week's LIVE Conference Call.

Make sure to give that a watch and then let me know if you have any questions!

JC