We don't know and neither do they.

Lies and Gibberish

Stepan N. Stool, PH&D March 24, 2001

Dr. Stool is sick and tired of making fun of the stuff spewing out of Wall Street. We are drowning in it, and it is serious. 

The Wall Street Madam was on Caint Nobody Buy Channel again Friday night, spreading the bulldung. Again, she touted the fact that Goldman Sacks the Unsuspecting Masses, reiterating that she recommended under weighting tech a year ago. This is a bunch of misleading, self-serving garbage. One, a 35% tech weighting was disastrous, especially if you tried to maintain it. Two, a 65%-35% stock-bond weighting was the opposite of what it needed to be to preserve capital. And Three, she publicly  recommended tech ten times between March 2000, and January 2001.

Then there's this Bear Market Territory horse manure. Dr. Stool is going to tear his hair out over this one. Supposedly when the Dow is down 20%, it's a bear market. So Thursday, for part of the day, it was a bearmarket, but late Thursday and Friday, it wasn't. These analysts and media types look like a bunch of jackasses with that crap. But then, they are jackasses.

A bear market is not a matter of degree. It's a matter of direction and duration. And there aren't three markets. There is one market. The Dow and the S&P are merely proxies for the market, the Nasdaq for part of it. We have been in a bear market since January of 2000. The Dow Theory confirmed the change in the primary trend in April of 2000. The market is not jumping back and forth across a line in the sand -- you're a bear, no I'm not, yes you are, no I'm not.

This is a bear market, and you must act accordingly.

Then there's that flaming idiot, James "Dow 36,000" Glassman, and all the other shills and stock apologists (the opposite of stock proctologists) who keep chanting this utter nonsense that stocks have provided an average 12% annual return over the last 100 years, (like 100 years is a normal investing horizon), and that they're the best investment for the long haul. 

Dr. Stool did a little research into this, which he will detail in a column this week. Lo and behold, what did he discover? Ladies and Gentlemen, Stoolseekers of the world. The science of Stock Proctology has just uncovered the Big Lie of the Century. The truth is that, between December 31, 1900, and December 31, 2000, the compound annual rate of return on the Dow Jones Industrial Average was, ARE YOU READY,

5.16%

There you have it.