“Born under a bad sign.
I’ve been down since I began to crawl.
I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”
This is one of my favorite tunes from one of the finest rock bands to come out of the 1960’s, “Cream”, music and lyrics by William Bell and Booker T. Jones, Jr. “Born…” is a quintessential example of the blues and being REALLY DOWN. What brought “Born Under a Bad Sign” to mind, was a post-close segment on CNBC’s Closing Bell having to do with the lack of enthusiasm a new, all-time closing high on the S&P 500 met.
To make my point today I was hoping that the on-line edition of CNBC would post a copy of the video to back up my comments. It was evidently so stupid and irrelevant that the editors decided not to put it on the site. Not only that, but they couldn’t even edit to give it some semblance of intelligence. Well, I’m writing about it anyway, even though I can’t provide direct proof of this less-than-stellar exchange.
In a nutshell, the discussion question was “Why, with the S&P 500 at a new all-time high, is no one happy or celebrating the event?” The answer from the panel (especially our old foil, Jeff Cox, “The Bad News Bearer”) was that things really weren’t that good. Why should we be celebrating? I mean these guys were negative, “Born Under A Bad Sign.”
The panel was obviously asleep for the past five years, or they require nirvana to make them happy. By the way, it is safe to say that this panel, CNBC and most of the financial media have been arguing against this bull market upturn since its inception, five years ago. They have provided a perfect ‘wall of worry’ for the market to scale. I am thankful that they are still negative, a good sign that the market advance remains on solid footing, sentiment-wise.
I’m no Pollyanna.
But, it looks to me like an environment that is more a ‘glass half full’. Plus, fixed income alternatives are not providing adequate competition for equities. It is encouraging that the media is subdued, cautious and in some cases, downright bearish. “There is no joy in Mudville” and Casey didn’t even strike out. He hit a homer!
Watch out when the fans in the stands start cheering!
What do you think?
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Bill – I love that song and quote that line all the time. Fun to see you use it here in your blog.