Mark Biller at Sound Mind Investing has an interesting observation about the unending dire predictions for the ongoing bull market (subscription required):
While it's completely anecdotal, it's hard for me to believe this bull market is going to end while so many financial journalists are calling for its demise so loudly and frequently. That's not how long-term bull markets usually end. Rather, it's usually the opposite: when nobody seems to have much bad to say about the stock market, that's the time to be nervously looking over your shoulder.This bull market has been hated from the day it first started rising over five years ago. Many investors -- both pros and amateurs -- have never gotten over their fear from the 2008-2009 financial crisis and never got reinvested. For an individual, that's terribly disappointing. For a pro, it's potentially devastating. Some of those pros have been writing why the bull market is about to keel over ever since. They've got so much invested in their calls that the bull market can't last, it definitely does make one wonder if they can be objective at this point.
The fascinating thing that most people forget about the stock market is that in every transaction there are two participants: a buyer and a seller. The buyer thinks the price is going up, and the seller thinks that price is going down. No matter what you read or see on television, half the money in the market is betting on it going up, and half the money is betting on it going down.
So why have so many talking heads been predicting the end of the bull market for so long, while other investors continue to drive it up? Are the talking heads, as a class, smarter than everyone else? I think it's more likely that their incentives to not align with those of other investors.
