As stocks headed into November the Dow Industrials, S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 were all at or very, very close to all-time highs. I know this comes as no surprise to my readers as I have written about my upside projections over and over and over. Dow 28,000 was next, a target I began discussing at the end of 2017. Five straight closes above that level will open up my long, long, longstanding target of Dow 30,000, a pie in the sky number I first floated when the Dow closed above 20,000 several years ago.
You certainly wouldn’t know stocks have behaved well this year if you listened to or watched the media. Almost all of the stories are just so negative and even dire. Earnings are bad. The economy is essentially in recession. Europe is a disaster. China is falling off a cliff. Tariffs will raise prices for consumers. The President colluded with Russia. Trump to be impeached. Sanders and Warren are attacking wealth and success. It’s enough to send you screaming into the night.
This bull market has feasted on all of the hate and negativity. No bull market in history has been more disavowed than this one. Yet every single time stocks weaken, every bear comes out of the woodwork with forecasts of a bear market, economy about to plunge and a repeat of 2008 or worse.
Most of those clowns just write newsletters and try to swindle people out of their money by predicting constant gloom, doom and Armageddon. Negativity definitely sells. Eventually, a day of reckoning will come and you can bet that those same clowns will claim success, fill the media with their nonsensical ads and try to peddle even more expensive newsletters, completely ignoring history or hiding from it.
The bull market is alive and reasonably well and will live on into 2020. Next year will likely present some challenges, but we will cross that bridge when I start to work on my 2020 Fearless Forecast.
For the most part, I have been positive on stocks throughout 2019 with a few exceptions, especially in June and July. At no time did I see the bull market ending nor a significant 10%+ decline coming. Buying any and all weakness has been my theme and for the most part, that has worked. Of course, like every year, I did have my share of flops when I dialed down on a more granular investment level.
I remain slightly negative in the short-term due to a host of small concerns I outlined yesterday in Street$marts. I will offer more detail tomorrow. Closing below Wednesday’s low should confirm a short-term peak has been firmly established and then we will look for weakness to turn positive again.
