In the week ended May 18, 2011 individual investors reacted to the recent downturn by voicing increased bearishness.
Ironically, that’s a bullish sign as pessimistic investors have already sold their shares and thus have large cash reserves to buy with. When everyone feels bullish they are usually already fully invested with no more cash left to push stocks higher.
Bespoke Investment Group has a nice chart showing how Bearish sentiment often peaks right around major bottoms.
What really matters for the viability of Social Security and Medicare isn’t going-broke dates, it’s their aggregate costs relative to the economy’s ability to pay them, Bruce Bartlett writes.
For each individual taxpayer, that would mean a 61% hike above your current federal income tax return, “now and forever,” to pay all promised benefits over and above the payroll tax.
Raj Rajaratnam paid a reported $40 million to his lawyer to get the worst possible result - 14 convictions on 14 counts.
Martha Stewart got a relative bargain rate of only $10 - $11 million in legal fees to become a convicted felon that was then barred from running her own company. Ironically, Martha could have simply admitted guilt and settled with the SEC originally for under $300,000 - pocket change for her. Legal advice like they got is truly remarkable in both its ineptness and cost.
I’d bet that 2011’s chart YTD would show an even higher percentage of ‘investor/speculator’ demand than 2010.
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