Friends
The bears rolled out the big guns today-first a WSJ article on Papa Bear George Soros (85) and then Carl Icahn (80) was on CNBC this morning. Both predicting gloom and doom for stocks, which is fine (everyone is entitled to an opinion), and goodness knows there is enough to worry about right now. The only caution warning I would sound before everyone panics and sells everything is that both Mr. Soros and Mr. Icahn have been extremely bearish for some time now (if you want to take the time to look it up-one might say that Mr. Soros has been bearish forever). No doubt, both have been tremendously successful investors in the past, so their opinions garner a lot of attention. The interesting thing in recent years has been how markets are confounding “the smartest guys in the room”. A perusal of recent hedge fund performance illustrates just how wrong many have been. It isn’t pretty. Again, we make no calls on market direction in any short period of time- that’s a game that is just too hard to win. Instead we continue to refer to the mountain of evidence that history provides – again I encourage you, if you haven’t had a chance yet to watch the Nick Murray interview, to do so. Heck, I’ll link it again today.
View Link Here
Despite their best efforts, the bears have to be disappointed in today’s action. After a modest early morning decline, stocks spent the day recovering and by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down a modest 19 points to finish the day at 17,985. The S&P 500 was down 3 points to close at 2115. Gold was up $10 to trade at $1,272 per ounce, while oil was down $.67 to trade at $50.57 per barrel WTI.
It might appear that we are taunting the bears. Perhaps just a little (believe me they will be all over the bulls the next downturn). Our message simply is that no one knows where the market is going to be next week, next month or next year. Long term investors with a game plan simply need to ignore all the daily noise and focus on making sure the plan is fulfilling their financial needs. Yes, we will have bear markets – many of them in the years to come. We know that, and it is part of the process. But it’s irrelevant whether these investing gurus are correct in their latest call (as we have seen they often are not). What is important is that we never let these headline grabbing predictions deter us from our long term goals. Over one’s investing lifetime they are nothing more than distractions.
Have a nice evening everyone. Sorry I got a little wordy today. I guess I was kind of feeling it.
