Dr. Strangebear

Or……..how I learned to stopped worrying and love the bull.

I bought a very large position in SSO earlier today for a couple of reasons:

• I don’t get my jollies out of losing money;
• The OPEX week clearly has import;
• I was impressed and convinced by Fujisan’s post last night, calling for – if memory serves – a push to 1086 by Friday.

I am having fewer and fewer compunctions about buying select stocks. That is evident from my watch lists.

One cause for concern for the bulls remains…………..volume! Just take a look at the volume graph; it’s simply pathetic.

It is generally true that prices climb higher at a far slower rate than they drop. This rally, however, has been a remarkable exception. The push higher has been explosive, and it has pushed higher with just about the same timetable and force as the drop itself.

The question, of course, is: when (if ever) will it end?

There are as many opinions as there are traders, but a few general camps would be, using the example of the Russell 2000 above:

• It has another 10% to go, and it will happen quickly. That would be painful for the bears, but I would hasten to point out that, at that level, the Russell would have completely retraced to the neckline of a head and shoulders pattern spanning three years whose beauty would make bears (if there are any left by then) weep tears of joy.
• It’s done climbing and will start falling. This has been uttered so many times by so many parties (including, I admit, a few times by me) that it’s not even worth considering anymore. The entire, "OK, now………….errr………OK, NOW!………..oh, wait…………….errr, NOW!" gets really, really old.
• We’re in a major new bull market and it’s simply going to keep pushing its way through to progressively higher prices.

For the bears out there who would like some encouraging news, the semiconductor index – which is a helpful bellweather – is looking like it is approaching a huge area of resistance. This is why I bought SSG yesterday.

Wow, and I thought emotions were running hot last week. Things are spiraling out of control.

I am getting emails from people that are quitting trading. That has never happened to me – not in five years of doing this – that people are out-and-out quitting. But they are.

I’m getting despairing messages from fellow bloggers that they are about to quit.

And – most telling of all – the level of snark is reaching new heights. I just got this in my email box:

What’s kind of interesting to me about all this is the following…………

Back when the bears were ruling the land, and we were making money hand over paw………

• I was never tempted – not even once – not even a little – to scamper around to other blogs and post nasty messages, or to telephone bulls that I knew to laugh at them, or to send hate mail to bullish bloggers. Zero. Never. Not once. It didn’t even cross my mind. So it’s bizarre that these unmarried male punks in their 20s (and that’s what most of them are, I assure you) feel the need to pull these stunts.
• Collectively, as a group, do you remember what we did when we had really fantastic profits? We would share ideas about charities to whom we could donate cash, and all kinds of good ideas were exchanged. I personally gave away a lot of money last October during one of our charity flings, and so did a lot of other Slopers.

People tend to think of bears as evil and nasty, but from my experience, bulls win that award, hands-down.