crosscurrents

A couple days ago Doug Kass wrote a piece "the curse of negativity" which was more a less a mea culpa for being overly negative throughout the years. He basically said that despite the ups and downs of the past several years it has paid off to be a optimist rather than a pessimist and he admits to have been overly pessimistic at times. I bet he's really refering to the last couple of years in particular. What's interesting is that in early March Kass made a similar mea culpa which I noted and within a few days the market took a sharp dip due to Japan. Ya, I know Japan was a fluke but hey, maybe the market would have dipped anyhow..... we'll never know. So, it will be interesting if his post will be another top signal.

On the other side of the ledger, the put/call ratio closed over 1 each of these past 2 days which suggests a lot of people are aware of the overbought condition I talked about last time and are betting/hedging on a pullback here. Oh brother....how many times have I seen aggressive top picking  like this go wrong these past several months? Most of the time, somehow someway the market ends up going higher still until these jokers throw in the towel. We'll see what happens this time.

I'm in a position now where I can just sit back and watch the action. My long exposure is down to 30% and I've taken profits such that I can really let them ride paranoia free. If they continue to rise I'd be inclined to lighten up further. If they drop I could be a strong holder or dump. No matter what, I'd still make out good considering my entry points. There is one investment though that I will never sell no matter what the price is and that's my daughter. She had her first birthday today!