Days like yesterday really beat the heck out of you. The reason? I think it's the "foregone conclusion" nature of things.
Some examples: first, the obvious one: when Action Alerts PLUS portfolio holding Apple (AAPL) broke through $120, that meant, frankly, that it has to go lower still, because now the chart is bad and the stock has no support, and everyone loves it and it is linked to China.
So if you go out and pound the table on it tomorrow, no one cares. But if you whisper something negative, the stock plummets to $107.
That's the dynamic, and it seems almost ineluctable. At a dinner I went to last night, there had to be a half dozen guys shorting Apple, and another half dozen scared to death and wanting out. I can only imagine what else is out there.
Same with oil. I keep hearing the same words associated with oil: freight train. Not going to get in front of that freight train.
It's almost as if there were a statistical improbability that it can do anything other than go to the thirties. Unimaginable. Impossible.
Again, it's that pre-ordained thing it's got going for it, now that it's been "cracked." Doesn't matter if there might be value, if there might even be a snapback, which everyone has now ruled out. Crude, the ETF, the big stocks, they are one- way tickets to hell.
Twitter's (TWTR) the same way. We are still getting some people who are talking about how Google (GOOGL) might bid for it, but it is beginning to sink in that the company's ridiculously overvalued and it is beyond belief hated and it is making a beeline to the teens. Again, no contest.
Of course, there are some "up" stocks. Disney (DIS) reports today so, of course, it runs right up into it, like Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN) ¿ which is a holding of the Growth Seeker portfolio. Inevitability of up? CVS (CVS) and Clorox (CLX) had their moments yesterday, when it looked like they might go down. But then the inevitability prevailed.
You know what I mean.
Now, in my many years of trading I have always felt that when you have this kind of consensus -- at least on the downside stocks -- it can't possibly be right. There has to be another side to it. It can't be so cut and dried. The consensus just couldn't be this correct.
Right now, though, I see cut and dried in so many places -- minerals, oils, tech, cellphones -- that it's shocking and depressing. You own, you lose, without an ounce of contrarian impulse, because unless you suppress it you could be crushed like a bug on a windshield.
Yes, it seems that it's pre-ordained.
