Sep

21

Prechter says to sell rally, one reads. One recalls a chapter one wrote about the man who I facetiously said may have caused more financial harm to more people than anyone. The chronic bear of Barron's. One concluded that he never could close out his bearish calls which had been unanimously, completely negative every seek since he started writing in 1966. (For once this is not hyperbole. I was forced to read every one of his columns before a certain collab would let me say it). Prechter is in a similar situation. How could he say that any time is a good time to buy since most of the time he has been bearish since Dow 500 when he took the six month boat ride which regrettably came back to the US. However one must compliment him on his very propitious bullish call near the lows in 2009. As one said about the chronic bear at Barron's, "how one wishes he had stuck to journalism (subtly recapping what B said about Rossini." "how one wishes he had stuck to comic opera)". "If E did not say to sell the rally, he would be closing out a position at a 5000% loss. May both of them join Livermore in a place reserved for those who have inflicted more financial harm than any one else in history. P.S in saying this, one calls out to Dr. Jov for augmentation as to who from history has caused more financial harm. Napoleon? Lenin? John Law?

Jeff Sasmor adds:

Add the legions of "Financial Consultants" working for the big retail brokerages who advised buy and hold no matter what. Couple that with "averaging in" (there was some spiffy term for it I can't recall) we now have a population of boomers who demographically have most of the wealth but have no feeling of confidence in the stock market and no trust in the available advisers.

Burned badly 2x in 10 years has profound negative implications for aging boomers who are concerned that they have no time to make back the losses and just want steady income. Will they feel good when the bonds they've been advised to buy go down in price? Or feel helpless that they get hosed no matter what they do.

Peter Earle writes:

For the most harm caused in financial history - a topic I cannot, if I tried, avoid weighing in on– I put forth he who informed both the philosophical and argumentative implementaria of agrarian reformers of many stripes most plentifully, in my estimation, over the last nearly two hundred years: Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon. Saint-Simon, an early intellectual who disavowed his wealthy, aristocratic moorings, was an advocate of positivism and, applying that practically, a sort of technocratic central planning which, as history has shown, was far more workable than other philosophies he inspired; specifically, Marxism. A contemporary of Hegel, I consider him the rightful heir to the modern scourges of Communism, Socialism, Fascism, the "Third Way", and central planning as a holistic species.


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