Points To Ponder Since 1928, the average bull market has lasted 57 months providing a 164% gain. Our current “baby” bull has furnished investors with a 91% price return in a mere 23 months. The data are similarly as compelling if one looks at the duration of economic expansions. Our current recovery has been underway for 20 months while the average duration has been 45 months over the last 110 years. – Jason Trennert, Investment Strategy Viewpoint, February 4, 2011 Usually the first third of a bull market is led by stocks bouncing back from getting crushed in the prior bear. But the last two-thirds of bulls are usually led by high-quality stocks, and particularly ones that weren’t perceived to be high quality early on. – Ken Fisher, Forbes, May 9, 2011 Statisticians deal with things that repeat themselves. This housing boom and bust is so historic and unprecedented, you can’t forecast the future because you have no comparison. – Robert Shiller, Yale University, Bloomberg, June 9, 2011 The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending, it is resolved only by increases in confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending. – Larry Summers, CNN Money, June 13, 2011 | | In Absolute Agreement The saving grace is that, although value is a weak force in any single year, it becomes a monster over several years. Like gravity, it slowly wears down the opposition. – Jeremy Grantham, GMO Quarterly Letter, January 2011 During the dot-com bubble, you met lots of people with tech stocks. Taxi drivers told you what dot-coms they owned. During the housing bubble you met normal, ordinary people who were trading up to expensive homes using adjustable-rate mortgages, buying new condos off plan to flip, and cashing out their fictional “equity” through a refinance mortgage. But who actually owns gold? I keep hearing about the gold bubble, but every time I ask people if they own any themselves, they say, “no, no, of course not, it’s a bubble.” – Brett Arends, MarketWatch.com, May 4, 2011 The genius of investing is recognizing the direction of a trend—not catching highs and lows. – Anonymous As long as inflation doesn’t ramp up to the double-digit levels of the 1970s and early 1980s—a scenario I consider extremely unlikely—stocks will act as an excellent hedge. The reason is simple: Stocks are claims on real assets, such as land and plant and equipment, which appreciate in value as overall prices increase. – Jeremy J. Siegel, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, June 2011 | | To the extent that some managers are trying to replace active security selection with active allocation across sectors, that is another name for market timing. History suggests that is rarely a durable strategy. – Edward Bernard, T. Rowe Price Vice Chairman, Bloomberg, June 9, 2011 Cocktail Conversation Turn on the television or surf the Web and you’re inundated with information about the market. But that access to information hasn’t made people better investors. – Norm Rothery, The Globe and Mail, January 1, 2011 We have to realize that the world is a different place and that the number of consumers in the world is in the process of doubling. That means that resources are going to be scarce. That means energy is going to be scarce, and the prices of energy in general and commodities in particular are going to be high. – Dennis Stattman, Barron’s, May 28, 2011 Timeless Tidbits Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than successful men with talent. – Calvin Coolidge Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. – Arthur Schopenhauer |