Me And My Brown Cow

Blogs are rather personal at times. (This blog ain't no different!)

And for me, me and my brown cow are extremely personal.

You can dislike it all you want but do not call it childish.

So do show some respect for me and my brown cow!

The Printers Did It!

The printers did it!

That's what caused the stocks to soar! Fundamentals???? LOL!

So says Dr. Marc Faber.

• Major central banks' efforts to lift the world economy by printing money has boosted asset prices, so stocks are unlikely to hit their lows from November and March, Marc Faber, the author of "The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report," wrote in his latest research report.
  
  "I have explained repeatedly in the past that if a government is really determined to try and postpone an inevitable collapse by 'printing money' in order to lift or support asset prices, it can be done," Faber wrote.
  
  "This is not to say that the global economy is about to embark on a strong and sustainable growth phase. It also doesn't mean that a new bull market in global equities a la 1982-2000 has begun," he said.
  
  "But I think that, at least in nominal terms (inflation-adjusted), the global printing presses being run by the world's central banks and fiscal deficits have begun to impact asset prices positively," Faber wrote.
  
  Many investors did not take advantage of the recent rally because they thought it was a bear-market rally, so they stayed on the sidelined, hoarding cash. But stocks are not likely to collapse, as more players take courage to dip into the market, he said.
  
  "Put yourself in the shoes of a fund manager who, in the last 18 months, has lost 50 percent of his clients' money and missed the recent rally," Faber wrote.
  
  "What is he likely to do? I would think he would be inclined to purchase equities as they correct the sharp advance since early March, especially as the economic news in the near term becomes less negative," he said.
  
  But very high volatility and "price fluctuations that don't appear to make any sense" will be the new dominant characteristic of the market, he warned.
  
  The lows reached by resource and mining stocks, as well as Asian equities and most emerging markets, are likely to hold for now, according to Faber. But the US long-term government bond market "has the highest probability" of having reached a high, he said.

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/30742936

Temasek Admits To Their Terrible Investing Mistake In Bank Of America By Cutting Losses!

Just saw this news clip: Temasek sells BOA stake

• SINGAPORE'S state-owned investment vehicle Temasek Holdings said today that it has sold its entire stake in the Bank of America.
  
  A Temasek spokesman said: 'We have divested our shares in Bank of America.'
  
  The Straits Times understands the sale was done via a series of transactions in the first quarter of this year.
  
  Temasek declined to reveal the average price it got for its 188.8 million shares, but preliminary estimates put the potential loss at a whopping US$4.26 billion.
  
  Temasek had paid about US$5.9 billion for a 13.7 per cent stake in Merrill Lynch since December 2007, which was converted into Bank of America stock following the completion of the acquisition. This gave it a stake of some 188.8 million Bank of America shares, or about 3.8 per cent.
  
  Reuters cited a source briefed on the deal saying that the shares were sold for between US$2.53 and US$14.81 in the first quarter.
  
  Based on a Reuters calculation which assumed an average price of US$8.67, Temasek may have suffered a loss of about US$4.26 billion.
  
  Temasek's net portfolio value dropped 31 per cent between March 31 and Nov 30 last year, from $185 billion to $127 billion.
  

This reminded me of the posting dated Friday, February 20, 2009, Singapore GIC Investment Mistake In Citigroup And UBS ( Do read the highlighted link, “Substantial Long-term Returns” From Bank Investments? Fat Hope, GIC )

• Anyway I am thinking out loud here. My thinking could be obviously flawed but I cannot stop wondering about Singapore GIC. What are they thinking? Obviously Citigroup and UBS were terrible mistakes and they paid some terribly high prices for their mistakes. So why couldn't they just admit they made a terrible mistake and realise their losses? Why can't they cut loss? Why insist on taking this long term approach? Don't they realise that holding them long term solves nothing? Long term investors? They look like long term mistake holders!

Well looks like they are finally admitting to their terrible investing mistake in Bank Of America. Bravo! It takes a big man to admit to their mistakes man!

ps: see also Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) Suffers Huge Losses - Big Ouch For Temasek! and Temasek Holdings Chalking Up Massive Paper Losses Everywhere!

Short Comments On Crude Oil Futures And Baltic Dry Index

On FinancialSense. Wholesale Prices Post Largest 12-Month Decline Since 1950

• Crude Oil Daily Futures
  
  Floating Storage.
  Because of the contango shown on the left, it may be cheaper to buy crude now, assuming one has storage, and storage costs are low enough.
  
  Of course, whether it is wise to stock up now depends entirely on where prices head from here.
  
  Regarding contango, a friend just pinged me with this comment:
  
  "Nordic American estimates that up to 80 VLCC's (Very Large Crude Carrier) are currently used as 'floating storage.' I have heard from a shipping company in Hong Kong that they think it is even more, as China has apparently hired many of the old single hull ships to use as floating storage until it can build enough storage facilities on land. There's a lot of oil 'floating about', literally."
  
  All things considered, oil prices are due for a pullback and gasoline prices at the pump are likely to follow. Moreover, with the possible exception of food, consumer prices in general will remain under pressure, if not indeed negative on a year over year comparison basis for quite some time as well as falling producer prices pass up the chain.

On the Baltic Dry Index.

Well, you do note that it had been soaring lately. Yes? Have you been watching?

• MUMBAI: Despite India’s key benchmarks ended in red sighting the uncertainty over the election outcome, shipping stocks soared on Thursday as Baltic dry index, which is a leading indicator of global demand for raw materials hit new high of 2009.
  
  ABG Shipyard jumped 6.84 per cent, Bharati Shipyard climbed 10.16 per cent, Essar Shipping surged 18.72 per cent, Mercator Lines rose 6.87 per cent and, Seamec advanced 4.99 per cent, Shreyas Shipping gained 12 per cent and Varun Shipping gained 3.45 per cent.
  
  The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) closed above 2300 for the first time since October 10, and reached a 7-month high on Wednesday of 2332. Over the last ten days, the BDI has increased by 560 points (32%), and over the last 25 days the index has increased by 869 points (59%).
  
  February to April saw the highest amount of iron imported by China, including more than 45 million tons in April alone. That has chiefly propelled the rise in the Baltic Dry Index, with heavy activity reported on the Australia to China route.
  
  Chinese buying of iron ore was predominantly stimulated by lowest prices in four years. The latest CIF (cost, insurance and freight) price. (source: here )

A Quick Look At Scomi Group's Latest Earnings

Had not posted an update on Scomi Group for a long time.

Here are some older postings done on Scomi Group.

• Saturday, May 06, 2006 Regarding Scomi
• Saturday, August 19, 2006 Regarding Scomi Group again
• Tuesday, August 29, 2006 Scomi again
• Thursday, November 16, 2006 Privatisation of Scomi? (what a joke! :p)
• Thursday, November 16, 2006 Update on Scomi
• Saturday, November 18, 2006 Compelling Reasons to Privatise Scomi (now? lol! )
• Tuesday, February 27, 2007 Update on Scomi Group

From that last posting, Update on Scomi Group

• Scomi group announced its earnings last night. Now I will add in Scomi latest earnings to my comments in bold blue.
  
  For its fiscal year 2003, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 14 million.
  For its fiscal year 2004, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 61.4 million.
  For its fiscal year 2005, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 151.692 million.
  For its fiscal year 2006, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 84.545 million.
  
  ( And its fiscal year 2006 earnings is achieved on the back of its sales revenue increasing from 1.067 BILLION to 1.575 BILLION. WOW! Incredible. Despite an increase of its sales revenue by as much as 500 million, its earnings fell from 151 million to 84.545 million!!)
  
  Let's compare some key balance sheet items mentioned before. New comments in bold blue.
  
  Cash is at 87.595 million. (Cash now is at 301.518 million.)
  Trade receivables has increased to 438.430 million. (Trade receivable is now at 497.968 million.)
  Group's borrowings is not at 918.363 million. (Group borrowings is now at 1.330 BILLION!!)

Scomi announced its earnings last night. ( Yeah, some would insist that I am nuts to talk about fundamentals when the current sentiments clearly indicates a trading market! Yes, screw them fundamentals! :p2 )

Anyway let's have a look again.

For its fiscal year 2003, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 14 million.
For its fiscal year 2004, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 61.4 million.
For its fiscal year 2005, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 151.692 million.
For its fiscal year 2006, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 84.545 million.
For its fiscal year 2007, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 257.149 million.*
For its fiscal year 2008, Scomi Group announced an earnings of 116.553 million.

*note 2007, see q2 earnings. Earnings was distorted in a positive manner due to disposal of its holdings in Scomi Oilfield limited*

On Feb 2009, Scomi announced it made some 40 million. Quarterly rpt on consolidated results for the financial period ended 31/12/2008

Last night. Quarterly rpt on consolidated results for the financial period ended 31/3/2009. Scomi announced its earnings were only some 9.5 million!! (Same quarter a year ago, it made some 21 million) oO

The following is a newsclip on Business Times.

• Scomi Group Q1 net profit drops
  
  Published: 2009/05/15
  
  OIL and gas services provider Scomi Group Bhd(7158) said its first-quarter net profit dropped by more than half from a year ago, due to higher financing, raw material and personnel costs.
  
  Net profit for the January-March quarter was RM9.5 million, compared with RM21.8 million in the same period last year.
  
  In its filing to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, the group said the decline in net profit of RM12.3 million, or 56 per cent, was mainly attributable to the higher cost of raw materials, higher personnel costs with additional manpower especially in the energy and logistics engineering division and increase in finance costs.
  
  Revenue was RM528.2 million, up 10.8 per cent from RM476.7 million a year ago.
  
  The major contribution came from its oilfield services and the energy and logistics engineering divisions, which collectively generated 93 per cent to the group's revenue.
  
  Scomi Group said the uncertainty surrounding global markets, weaker consumer demand and tightening credit will continue to impact its performance in 2009.
  
  Recognising the challenges ahead, the group said it will continue to practice prudent cash and risk management together with measures to improve cost savings and productivity.

I was also curious on some of the key balance sheet issues mentioned last time. I would mark the current numbers in green.

1. Cash is at 87.595 million. (Cash now is at 301.518 million.) Cash is now 135.191 million.

2. Trade receivables has increased to 438.430 million. (Trade receivable is now at 497.968 million.) Trade receivables is now at 862.085 million!!!!!!!!!!!!

3. Group's borrowings is now at 918.363 million. (Group borrowings is now at 1.330 BILLION!!) Group's borrowings is now at 1.273 Billion.

How now my dearest Brown Cow?

ps... I have no idea how Scomi Group stock will trade. If you make or don't make money, you do not have to thank me. :D

The Issue Of TRUST In Investing: Do You And Should You Trust Your Financial Advisor?

Was just reading the following posting on NationalPost, Can you trust your financial advisor?

In that post, it highlights a video clip on CBC: here. Do give it a view. :D

This reminded me of an article I read last year also. Ripped Off: Can You Trust Your Financial Adviser?

And on a much broader sense, this old article deserves to be highlighted again.

Anthony Deden wrote In Whom Do You Trust? Semper (In)Fideles

• We can never make any investment without running these sorts of risks – indeed, the returns to our investment arise directly as the reward we earn because we are running them.
  
  On the other hand, if the accountant is fudging the books, or if the company declares assets which don’t exist, or if the CEO is otherwise deceiving his shareholders and creditors – clearly, this is a very different sort of hazard. This is what we mean by "unsystematic" risk.
  
  A moment’s thought will show that it is highly problematical – to the point of impossibility – to uncover the existence of such risks until it is too late. Fraud is generally undetectable unless one has complete access to all the books and complete freedom to question their entries. Even then, one must know what questions to ask – a difficult task in itself in today’s world, where there is no shortage of executive brainpower devoted to ensuring that even the questions are well obscured.

Mr. Deden then gave some excellent investing advice.

• Keep the red flag flying
  
  We have laid out all the above in the hope it might prove useful in clarifying and identifying some of the little-regarded sources of risk. We will skip past the densely packed minefields of accounting and auditing (q.v. Enron, WorldCom, Parmalat, et al.) for another time.
  
  In the end, if we should not rely on the rules and accounting standards, or on mathematically tractable entities, to mark out dishonesty and incompetence, and if we cannot identify malfeasance directly from an Excel spreadsheet, what hope do we have to survive? Or, must we withdraw from the market completely, perhaps pausing only to bury a few gold coins in the soil? Perhaps not.
  
  Far from that, we believe there are a number of readily comprehensible, qualitative and perhaps intuitive considerations to which we can turn when examining the securities of a company. Any one of these signals should give rise to serious doubts about the overall suitability of a given investment. If more than one such factor is in existence – and believe me, these bearers of bad news tend not to travel alone – a huge red flag should prompt us to utterly reject the investment altogether. It is far better to overlook a good company not fully understood than to pack a portfolio with unmarked dirty bombs; however en vogue they might be.
  
  For every investment idea rejected out of a sensible exercise of prudence, there are a multitude out there somewhere – presently unknown or perhaps not yet even founded – that are far more worthy of interest and money.
  
  Six (financial) flags
  
  Not enough "stuff" – Deficiencies in net tangible assets. This is clearly a basic banking approach to lending that can also be used by equity investors. When a company’s balance sheet is stripped of intangible assets, ‘other assets’ and any other items which are only financial in nature, what is left is the tangible asset base – the "stuff" the company really uses to pay its suppliers, hire its workforce, repair and upgrade its equipment and to generate wealth for its owners. If there do not seem to be enough of these in comparison to the rest of the entries in the accounts one should start to wonder whether stocks and machinery have been replaced by smoke and mirrors. The wellspring of "write downs" starts with a hollow balance sheet.
  
  Mergermania – Excessive acquisition activity is also a sign of ill health. Nothing truly great was ever built via a process of fevered acquisitions. This is not to dismiss all takeovers, regardless of circumstance, but to point out that they are usually far more lucrative for the corporate financiers and insiders than for the company stockholders. Frequent acquisitions are a sign of weakness, of misplaced priorities and of the inability to enhance worth from within.
  
  More growth – and at any price. In practice, this usually means growth at too high a price. Market share is not what matters but return on capital. Profitability is what counts, not mere turnover, much less "eyeballs" or any of the other New Era nonsense metrics. No honest business ever grew in an uninterrupted geometric progression – especially not one in double digits. Life just doesn’t come in such neat packets, no matter what Jack Welch might say in his latest airport executive pep-talk.
  
  Too many trips to the well. Frequent recourse to the financial markets for funding is another danger sign. A good business makes money by reinvesting its profits, not by slowly mortgaging itself to its bankers or by continually diluting its owners.
  
  Too much fine print. If the annual report has more fine print than a budget edition of "Gone with the Wind," the firm’s shareholders will only get to dream of Tara; they will never know her. Well-run companies have simple and straightforward accounts. Lots of fine print can either imply the company doesn’t know what it’s doing – or that it doesn’t want you to. In the end, more often than not, fine print raises more questions than it answers.
  
  Lack of substantive ownership by those at the top – and presumably by those in the know – is hardly a ringing endorsement of a business. If the CEO and his buddies only hold stock through option grants and never actually pay for their holdings, and if the members of the board have better things to do with their pensions than to waste them on the company they supervise – who are we to argue?
  
  Five (Behavioral) flags
  
  Managing the stock, not the company. We believe that in an entrepreneurial setting, the price of common stock is merely the reflection of wealth rather than wealth itself. To the extent that the Street and the stock ticker become the focus of a company’s management, we would swiftly avert our own gaze. Wise, long-term decisions cannot be made when most strategies adopted are aimed at flattering the next quarter’s numbers. In recent years, in fact, CEOs will even give "guidance" to analysts as to future sales and profits – a practice which, at heart, is designed merely to support and cater to share price management.
  
  Tell me something I don’t already know. More often than not, a firm which insists on calling in consultants at every turn becomes hooked on the avoidance of full managerial responsibility, no matter how it may justify it. Consultants often know little more (and sometimes quite a lot less) about a business than the people working there. Typically, they are an expensive way to confirm the Boss in something he lacks the resolve to implement himself. Quite often, consultants are also a sure sign of a firm in which ideas have dried up because of poor internal communication, strained employee relations, or limited understanding of the customer.
  
  Who are those people cluttering up the shop? In the free market, the consumer is king and anyone who loses sight of this simple truth is likely to be thrown out of the kingdom. By succumbing to the lure of Wall Street – induced empire building, many companies have lost sight of whom they serve. The same condition often causes them to neglect their employees also – meaning they end up with unhappy people on both sides of the counter.
  
  Packing the Court. If you think that the board of directors has been picked in order to curry political favor, or to provide a chorus to sing "Yes!" in harmony to the CEO, beware! Does the company routinely offer sinecures to petty aristocrats, or does it participate in the revolving door back-scratching of those on the government-boardroom-bureaucracy carousel? Does the board consist of a fashionably correct ethnic or gender-based mix – where the persons concerned seem to have been chosen for PR reasons, not on personal merit? Are there figureheads around the table, rather than independent and respected voices who can defend the shareholders from the worst impulses of a dictatorial CEO?
  
  Rock’n’Roll Cowboys. The CEO is the person employed by the owners to put their capital to work in running a business. Let us not forget, he is (admittedly very expensive) hired help. His role is to serve the owners to the best of his ability. An inveterate show-off, less well known for his business acumen than for his yachting exploits, his mistresses, his sports sponsorship, his politics, or any of a number of other extra curricular pursuits, would not make it past the selection panel if you and I had been asked to sit on it. If the guy wants to be an Emperor, let him emigrate to Ruritania. If he wants to be a rock star, let him go take a few guitar lessons. Meanwhile, I want to invest in an entrepreneur who is too busy running the company for such distractions and is humble enough to know that there is always more he does not know than there is that he does. The first guy will doubtless make himself rich: the second might make his owners rich instead.
  
  
  We earnestly hope the foregoing has given the reader a few pointers as to where he should start exercising "street smarts" in the selection of investments. Once honed and directed, these intuitive skills – when wedded to the analytical capabilities which anyone can acquire with a little study – should act as a defense mechanism against the many elusive unsystematic risks that plague our financial world.
  
  In the end, one can only trust his own judgment, intuition and skepticism, not only in investment selection but also in the selection of those to whom he conveys fiduciary duty.
  
  If one can manage to spot the red flags, warning signs and maintain discipline in the face of great challenges – resist the tug of the ticker tape and the smooth talk of the stock salesmen and uppity bankers – then that person might just stand a chance against great odds.
  
  We reckon that’s a lesson which is worth at least half of a hundred and fifty million francs
  
  
  

Is It A Good Option To Bet On The Emerging Markets?

Posted On The UK Telegraph: Emerging markets second wind blows in the face of short-term thinking

Here is a snippet of what's written..

• ...Perhaps not surprisingly, given the uncanny ability of many investors to buy high and sell low, that gloom marked a turning point. My observation that emerging market investors had given up hope along with half the value of their portfolios came within days of the start of a new bull market for these riskiest of assets. The MSCI Emerging Markets index bottomed out on October 27, and since then it has risen by 50pc.
  
  As investors have rediscovered their appetite for chasing returns in far-flung places, some markets have done considerably better than this. Brazil's Bovespa index is up more than 70pc since its October low, while Russia's RTS index has very nearly doubled since January. The oil price has risen by two thirds since Christmas Eve. The FTSE 100, by contrast, is up just 8pc since October. America's S&P 500 stands at the same level it did six months ago.
  
  A couple of weeks ago, emerging market investment funds had one of their best ever weeks, taking $4bn (£2.6bn) of new money. Since November more than $10bn has flowed into these funds compared with almost $50bn heading the other way out of developed market funds. "De-coupling", a vogue investment term a year ago but dismissed as wishful thinking six months later, is back in fashion.
  
  Three factors have driven this sentiment yo-yo. First, the Chinese government announced a massive 4,000bn yuan (£400bn) stimulus package in November, which fuelled hopes that other emerging market exporters could switch their attention from the cash-strapped West to the world's new consumer of last resort. Twenty years ago, two thirds of emerging market exports were to developed countries. Now about half goes to other emerging markets.
  
  Second, investors started to believe that Asia's banks were less exposed to toxic assets and so less vulnerable to nationalisation. More broadly, the high savings rates and government surpluses in the region suggested that emerging markets were actually a safer long-term bet than developed markets.
  
  Third, investors reacted to early signs that the worst of the global recession might be over by switching from safe but over-priced assets (such as government bonds) to risky but potentially rewarding investments like emerging market equities and commodities. The price of copper, a bellwether of global economic growth, rose by 40pc in the first three months of 2009.
  
  Can the rise continue? Overall, emerging markets don't look over-priced, having fallen from an average of 18 times earnings a year ago to just eight in October and about 11 today. But generalising about emerging market investments is dangerous when the outlooks for the Baltic states and China, for example, are so different.
  
  The valuations of the hottest markets are starting to ring alarm bells. China's Shanghai Composite index trades on a price/earnings multiple of 30 today, three times as much as it did six months ago. Brazil's multiple has jumped from seven to 19 and its government is intervening in the currency markets to prevent the real from appreciating too quickly against the dollar.
  
  Proponents of the emerging markets story argue that companies operating in the developing world should trade at a premium because of the greater growth potential in these markets. Per capita incomes in these fast-growth parts of the world more than doubled between 2002 and 2007 compared with an increase of less than 40pc in developed markets. Economic growth in high single digits is expected in countries like China and India, compared with falls in the industrialised world this year and then a probably anaemic recovery as rising taxes and a long process of debt reduction holds back growth. Even so, today's valuations leave little wriggle room should growth disappoint in any way.
  
  Two clear lessons emerge from the recovery in emerging stock markets over the past six months. First, when all around you are reading the last rites for a region or asset class, your antennae should start twitching. The best time to buy is when it feels hardest to do so.
  
  Second, investors should ignore the short-term noise and back the long-term investment case. When I wrote about the abandonment of the emerging markets thesis six months ago I noted that "the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook forecasts growth in developing Asia of 7.7pc, with China a bit higher and India a bit lower. These are rates the rest of us can only dream of as we head into recession."
  
  

Yeah Them Market Call Bragging Rights!

LOL!

Love it. Absolutely.

On MarketWatch.com. Who wants bragging rights?

• By Mark Hulbert
  
  May 13, 2009, 10:42 a.m. EST
  
  Who wants bragging rights?
  
  Commentary: It doesn't much matter what we call the rally since March 9Explore related topics
  
  ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- Whoever finishes with the most money wins.
  
  That may seem unobjectionable enough -- even obvious.
  
  Yet, try injecting this thought into the debate over how to classify the market's rise since March 9. You'll get lots of objections from investors who consider it to be of the utmost importance whether or not we're in a new bull market, as opposed to a mere bear market rally.
  
  But how important is it, really?
  
  If you can make money from it, does it matter what you call it? Doesn't this debate boil down to little more than just bragging rights?
  
  Giving these questions added urgency: It's possible for an adviser to win bragging rights and still lose a lot of money.
  
  Just take Harry Schultz, editor of the International Harry Schultz Letter. Fellow columnist Peter Brimelow named it Newsletter of the Year for 2008 because of a prescient prediction in the fall of 2007 that the investment markets faced an imminent "financial tsunami."
  
  Schultz was spectacularly right, of course.
  
  And, yet, according to the Hulbert Financial Digest's calculations, the newsletter's model portfolio lost 76.1% during 2008, more than doubling the 36.7% loss for the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index .
  
  Who needs bragging rights like those?
  
  Imagine, for a moment, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallying another five thousand points to reach the 14,000 level, and then commencing an extended decline that takes it below the March 9 low of 6,547. Would the entire rise to the 14,000 level -- a 114% increase -- be considered a bear market rally just because the Dow did not reach a new high before it reached a new low?
  
  It's surprisingly difficult to answer this question with a precise definition that fits all of what we in the past have considered to be bull and bear markets. It's reminiscent of the challenge the Supreme Court faced when discussing pornography: They conceded that they didn't know how to define it, though they insisted that they knew it when they saw it.
  
  One definition that I have often relied upon in my columns is the one devised by Ned Davis Research, the quantitative research firm. According to them, a bull market requires one of three conditions to hold: (1) at least a 30% rise in the Dow in 50 calendar days, (2) at least a 13% rise in the Dow in 155 calendar days, or (3) at least a 30% reversal in the Value Line Geometric index .
  
  This definition strikes me as eminently reasonable. And, according to it, the market's rise since March 9 is indeed a bull market.
  
  Note carefully, however, that if you adhere to this definition, you also must classify as a bull market the rally from late 1929 to early 1930. That rally began on November 13, 1929, following the 48% loss for the Dow that occurred over the previous three months. Between then and the subsequent April 17, the Dow rallied 48%.
  
  Not surprisingly, investors' mood became markedly cheerier during that rally. President Hoover's Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, stated in February 1930 that "there is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about."
  
  Yeah, right.
  
  Over the 26 months following that high of April 17, 1930, as we now know all too well, the Dow lost 86%.
  
  The lesson to learn, I think, is that regardless of whether the Dow's 48% rise between November 1929 and April 1930 is called a bear market rally or a new bull market, profiting from it required nimble footwork. Agreeing on what to call it made little difference.
  
  You could be right and still lose a lot of money, just as you could be wrong and nevertheless turn a handsome profit.
  
  I would apply that same lesson today.
  
  So be my guest: Call the rally since March 9 either a bull market or a bear market rally. The important question is what to do with your portfolio to maximize returns and minimize risk.

And more importantly... how now Brown Cow?

Would You Buy This Stock Pullback? and reckon that Sell In May And Go Away An Unwise Option This Year?. Look at them investors getting so bullish now!

But if they are so bullish, why are the Insiders disposals at record highs? Why are the major shareholders disposing their shares like crazy? Are they in need of money so desperately that they are willing to forgo the market rally? Hey even the blog on WSJ is highlighting this issue, Insider Selling Adds to Cautious Tone

And what about the uncle with the bow tie? Why is Jim Rogers warning on stocks and why is he calling an end to USD rally?

What is all that talk about US Government is inflating the market? Why is Whitney calling this "The great government momentum trade"? Why?

Even some bloggers are noting some 'sell' signals. Three 'Sell' Triggers out of Four

On FinancialSense, Ryan Puplava wrote Recipe: Bear Market Bottom

• Everything is pointing towards an improvement to our economic environment; however, the market has gotten ahead of itself in this rally with a return of 39.6% from a March 6th low to a May 8th high. We have one part improved expectations, but we’re missing the follow through of those improved expectations into retail sales and an increase in industrial production. The technology sector signaled a short-term correction last week with its shift from sector lead to sector lag. The advance-decline line is rolling over. The S&P 500 bullish percent index is rolling over. All technicals are pointing towards a short-term top, but we have the potential this summer to confirm the March bottom in stocks and point towards a recovery in the economy in the second half of 2009 which would mix to create the recipe for a bear market bottom.

Remember Whitney's strong words on the financial sector? I Would Not Own Bank Stocks: Meredith Whitney

• "At a core basis, I would not own these stocks," Whitney said in a live interview. "Their business models are not going to come back."
  
  Whitney, a former analyst at Oppenheimer who has her own firm, is renowned for calling out the problems with banks' toxic assets before the issue became widespread.
  
  "This is the great government momentum trade," Whitney said on why bank stocks had seen some improvement lately. "But the underlying core, earnings power of these banks is negligible."
  
  Whitney also said that consumer spending is still going to remain slow. "There's a massive retraction in consumer liquidity," said Whitney. "Credit contraction is happening at an accelerated pace. Consumer spending is going to be less than people expect going forward."

Well, if Whitney is correct, then legendary investor Bill Miller could be really dead wrong! Miller Wrestles Whitney in Showdown Over Bank Stocks

How now Brown Cow?

* whistle *