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Commentary: RealMoney Guest Commentary
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Double Bubble, Toil and Trouble
By Thierry Martin

4/2/01 1:11 PM ET


To provide a very early heads-up on a potentially market moving event, I feel compelled to warn you of a possible double bubble. The signs are subtle, but there is no avoiding the fact that we are setting up for a monstrous and unavoidable rally that will make last year's highs look like a buying opportunity.

What is a double bubble? It is the opposite of a double bottom. It forms when, after the most devastating drop in history, the stock market quickly heals itself by allowing another bubble to form.

Investors last year ended up holding stocks that dropped from $234 to $2.34 while they were our of town looking at properties to buy with their (evaporated) gains. Every expert says these stocks will never revisit their old highs. How do they know? These are the same analysts who said last year that interest rates wouldn't affect tech stocks. What if they are wrong again? What happens if last year's price-to-earnings ratios of 200 were really cheap compared to what they will be when the Dow hits 36,000?

We may be, right now, in the mother of all pullbacks -- and Greenspan's head will spin like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist when he realizes that there is nothing he can do about a mindless rally this time. Greenspan can spew twisted gibberish at the markets to try to control their "animal spirits," but in the end the market may have him for lunch also.

Rats are willing to undergo repeated and powerful electric shocks to obtain a small amount of food or pleasure, much like a gambler keeps returning to the races after losing his life savings. I sense that many investors are keeping one eye on the Nasdaq, waiting for the first confirmation that the direction of prices has changed and is up again just like the old days.

Who can blame them? Watching your money multiply tenfold in a matter of months is very addictive. All the sermons in the world from the bears won't keep these speculators from doing it all over again. I would be amazed if most traders had suddenly become wiser from the recent carnage the first time around.

If 14,000 new online trading accounts are being opened every day, there is plenty of fresh meat to fuel the next bull run. Not to mention the hordes of bottom-feeders accumulating stocks for the long term -- which could easily fuel a dramatic rally as liquidity dries up in the stocks being held by these "strong hands."

The $2 trillion in sidelined cash rushing back into the market as interest rates fall will buy a lot of stock, given the current depressed prices.

Early signs that a double bubble is forming would be:

  • No apartments for sale near Wall Street for less than $1 million;

  • CNBC staff stops looking terrified of losing their jobs every time the market sells off;

  • Callers start making comments about Maria Bartiromo's looks instead of asking her guests whether they should sell their tech stocks immediately;

  • Brokers stop running ads inviting customers to fund new accounts with only $50;
  • Traders can make fun of Barron's without appearing foolish;

  • Dollar-store stocks stop going up;

  • William Fleckenstein starts to sound like he is nuts once again;

  • Ken Wolff starts having trouble finding bottoms -- the market opens and stocks go straight up.

    I could go on, but I think you get the idea. You have been warned -- and of course, traders will all sell into the relentless rise of the next bubble because they all will think they have learned from the last one -- only to be annihilated shorting all the way up, just like they were destroyed buying the dips all the way down last year.

    The market is wily. If everybody expects the collapse of a rally, the market will go straight up. And a new group of "dumb money" short sellers will get wiped out.

    The double bubble -- it's not hard to imagine. The Fed is already printing money around the clock.

    Perhaps Bush will start behaving like a real president and actually express a complete thought, resulting in a surge of consumer confidence. Corporate earnings in the next few months will be compared to the last few and profits will look like they are blasting off to the moon. Low interest rates will finance a new surge of buying as everybody's credit card spending limit is raised. A new sector could suddenly lead the Nasdaq to new highs - maybe the biotechs, say, after the introduction of an immortality pill or maybe a home cloning kit. (I am not joking here.)

    What good are double bottoms anyway, if they don't lead to double bubbles?


    Using the pseudonym Fiasco Del Fuego, Thierry Martin of Montreal picks stocks every day for the Web site Fiasco Trade of the Day at www.fiasco.ca. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. While Martin cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he welcomes your feedback at Thierry Martin.
    Send letters to the editor to letters@realmoney.com.
    Read our conflicts and disclosure policy.
    Order reprints of RealMoney.com articles. Top

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