When Is the Bottom Really the Bottom? You'll Know It When You See It

Do you remember Aesop's Fable about the little boy who cried wolf? The moral of the story is that nobody believes a liar even when he is telling the truth. Are investors beginning to feel that way about all the Wall Street strategists, pundits, analysts and technicians who keep calling the bottom to this market?

Maybe they should. The level of intellectual pretense implicit in the bullish calls that dominate Wall Street is truly staggering. No one is so prescient that he or she can predict a bottom in a stock, let alone in the market. Yet, like a bunch of false prophets who never pick the correct number in the lottery, they keep on keeping on. (Is perhaps the only thing more dangerous to your net worth right now than a congenital bear a congenital bull?)

And we are fooling ourselves if we listen to them uncritically. As much as we may want to know the future, we really need to accept that no one has a completely clear crystal ball. Sometimes you just don't know when you are at an inflection point.

Like now. ...