The Odd Man Out

It has become increasingly fashionable to direct scorn and ridicule at the so-called equity permabears. This is understandable, to a point. These hardened observers and investors have thrown everything at the market, only to see prices go higher almost tick-for-tick with the intensity of their objections. Their curse is increasingly obvious. They can succeed intellectually only if they bite the bullet and buy the very uptrend that they so despise. Alternatively, they can change their mind and embrace the bull market, which would probably have every other investor running for the hills. The market, by implication, would cave in, but they would not be able to claim intellectual victory as those who saw the crash coming, let alone profit from it. Whatever fate awaits the equity bears in this cycle, I am starting to warm to their disposition, at least for the purpose of judging equities in the next six months. As such, while the onus usually, and justifiably, is on the equity bears to explain why it is that the market is compelled to spontaneously combust, the burden of evidence is now increasingly shifting to the bulls. Why is it exactly that global equities are ordained to push ever higher in an environment where fundamentals and other markets suggest that they shouldn’t?

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