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stock market informations
By: Anthony Green
Lists of data abound, showing signs to look for to tip you off as to whether we’re heading for business improvement or slump, or for a bull or bear market. During the
latter part of the 1990s, these data was used selectively by financial commentators.
Analysts fought to get air time or print space for self-serving reasons. And Wall Street became part of the entertainment industry. Thoughtful judgment calls, based on
extensive research, were no longer expected of TV or print media analysts. Instead, they were and are expected to entertain viewers and readers, and to put a positive
spin on all economic and financial data, no matter how dire it is in reality.
Market terminology is being twisted into the new language of Street-Speak, where nothing is ever what it seems, and the need for news has disappeared in favor of the
need to be reassured that, no matter what happens, the bull market will resume next week or next month.
Symbols have taken over from substance. And after years of the Clintoninduced culture of feeling your pain, a major reaction in the US to the September 11, 2001 attack
was to go out and buy a flag and wallow in the emotions of grief, instead of learning about crisis management for their portfolios, responsible citizenship, and for
their daily lives.
My first book in 1964 was also on bear markets. In it, I published a list of bear market signs for the responsible investor to watch, to alert them when a bear market
was imminent. Though many of those signs are still valid for a medium and long-term investor, and I will get to them in a moment, the way many of them now operate has
changed drastically in the last 5 years. Until about 1995, technical indicators usually had a few weeks lag time before the
data manifested themselves in the markets.
And the connection between economic conditions and stock market direction was still accepted as fact. But, from about 1995 on, the media and governments have
manipulated all data so much that the average investor today believes that, provided the Federal Reserve and US government cut interest rates or create bail-out
packages, it won’t be long before the late great bull market of the 1990s resumes.
Even the language has changed. In the 1980s, when it was necessary to subsidize the Savings and Loan industry to prevent it from collapsing, it was called a bail-out
And, though it did not cause a full-blown bear market, it was considered bearish enough to create a sizable correction in the DJIA.
In late 2001, with the airline industry on the verge of collapse and production at new lows, the bail-out was calledan economic stimulus package, and investors
reaction to the news has been to push the market back up! In the past, increased government spending and, at the same time, massive increases in the money supply were
regarded as fiscally irresponsible and a harbinger of inflation.
Today, investors turn to government with the same naive gratitude a small boy might show a parent who replaced the pocket money he lost.
Article Source: http://www.ezarticles.info
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