Newsletters Optimistic About February's Market

By Dian Vujovich

I always get a little bit nervous when so many Wall Street pundits and newsletter writers are gung-ho about the market. It reminds me of the day way back in 1987 when Wall Street had a birthday party for the then bull market.

“Are you kidding me,” I thought. “How like totally stupid–a birthday party for a bull market? Get real.” I have a tendency to get very excited about dumb things. Anyhow, it was the 5th birthday those yoyos were celebrating, by the way.

As fate would have it, it wasn’t long after that very day the October 1987 market crash happened.

One of the handful of best investment ideas I had but never acted upon was to buy puts on the market after hearing about that ridiculous birthday party bash. Had I done that, we’d probably have never met. I’d be spending part of my time in France, another part traveling and the third part somewhere on an island being pampered no doubt by a Mark Harmon look-a-like.

Back to the real world, Mark Hulbert wrote a column earlier this month about how investors ought not give up on the month of February siting six different market timing newsletter writers/editors whose outlooks are bullish for the month and pretty much for most of the year.

The include: Stephen Check and the Blue Chip Investor; Robert Brinker and Bob Brinker’s Marketimer (he’s not expecting a cyclical bear market until winter); Dan Sullivan’s The Chartist & The Chartist Mutual Fund Letter; Donald Dion’s Fidelity Independent Adviser; James Lowell’s Fidelity Sector Investor (he’s expecting a 10-15 percent profit-taking correction sooner rather than later this year); and Dan Wiener’s Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors.

“In summary, ” writes Hulbert, “All six advisers are bullish, with an average recommended domestic equity exposure of 95 percent.”

Now that’s a heavy domestic equity exposure suggestion—and it’s certainly not a fit for everyone or those of every age group.

Even with the market snuggling up to a possible close of below 10,000, and a whiff of correction in the air, there’s an awful lot of bullishness out there. Maybe that’s because the writers/editors are hoping to get a bit of the humungous amount of money that’s sitting on the sidelines into the market. That kind of big money move would certainly impact the market in an upward trend kind of way. Or maybe these guys, no gal writers in the group, do know of what they speak.

Then again, when everybody is preaching the same thing it’s sometimes best to wonder why. A herd mentality doesn’t always pay off, you may recall.

To read Hulbert’s column visit: http://tinyurl.com/ydnw3fz .