Mocking Fear, from Russell Sears
A good coach will always have a way to teach his athletes to mock fear, and spit in its eye. He will teach the runner to say, "I may not have anything left, but they will have to peel me off the track as I melt down the last yards."
Lately when I read an article on Bloomberg I get this over-the-top movie trailer voice going in my head: "Be afraid, be very afraid…" from the over-the-top 1986 horror film "The Fly".
We know the bear magazine cover story is a sign of sensationalist journalism at precisely the wrong moment… What are some of the other indicators of being over the top fear mongering? Here are a few that may be worth considering:
- The bear opinion appears first and is given much more space than the token bull.
- The phrase, "going back down too" appears much more often for stocks. Or opposite in the case of commodities, especially oil and gold.
- The derivatives expert is saying doom is inevitable.
- Article after article tells how fast and far we have to go to bounce back… and how we therefore must test or prove the bull (somehow, bear markets speed and depth means there is no bottom in sight). Trendfollowing must only work for the bear.
Mocking fear, is however, something completely different than mocking risks. Mocking risks is something the good coach never wants to see his team do. Taking lazy shortcuts, without considering risks, is overconfidence.