Sunday, October 22, 2006

Don't Believe Everything You Read

I'm probably the only person in the world with such peculiar pet peeves, so just a short comment on this recent article: Retail investors missed most of recent rally.

As equity markets rise, individuals are lured into buying more shares or adding extra dollars to mutual funds invested in stocks. By the time they've invested, the smart money -- corporations with insight into the health of their own businesses -- has usually stopped buying equities and gone elsewhere...

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaching 12,000 points for the first time ever Wednesday, this unhappy cycle may have begun again...

Retail investors "are starting to participate, but they didn't begin until nine days ago,"...


Not to pick on this reporter, nor the fella quoted above, but does anybody really believe individual investors suddenly woke from a coma only nine days ago?

Do you know how many $Trillions "retail" folks have parked in equity mutual funds, hedge funds, and ETF's (not to mention indirectly through pensions)?

A few Billion going to and fro in any given month is just noise.

In contrast, if memory serves, back in 2002, we saw $65 Billion exiting funds for several months in a row... and about the same amount pouring into bonds. Now that was a sentiment indicator.

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