Last week we highlighted Business Week's cover story on the meltdown in housing. This week's issue follows up with the credit markets. While the efficacy of the magazine cover indicator as a contrarian signal is up for debate, covers like these (as well as this morning's Wall Street Journal headline) show that no one can accuse the press of being overly bullish on the prospects for the economy. If things do become as bad as most of the media is predicting, it will be the most widely predicted crash in history. And remember, these headlines are coming out after many financials and housing stocks have already corrected 50% or more.
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Sorry, but I regard only covers of MAINSTREAM media as contrarian, but neither Businessweek nor WSJ is mainstream ... IMHO
I'd rather think, that even the experts don't understand the REAL implications of this derivatives driven melt down might have.
My fear is, that if you tried to value all the worthless waste, you'd come up with the result that ALL the big one's are BANKRUPT ...
Could it be, that markets hold up, because they have to? Nobody wants the truth NOW :)
Let bearish covers appear in the yellow press AFTER the stock market lost as a whole 50% and let some banks go belly up ... then it is contrarian.
At the moment everybody who is BEARISH seems to be contrarian!
Posted by: Oli | February 09, 2008 at 02:38 PM
If you dont include "Biz Wk " as a contra indicator, then you must be unaware of their "Death of the Stock Market" cover in ' 82.
"He who cannot remember history is doomed to repeat it"
Posted by: Kiyoshi Williamson | February 12, 2008 at 05:37 PM
"If things do become as bad as most of the media is predicting, it will be the most widely predicted crash in history."
And it's an ironclad law that things like crashes don't get predicted.
Posted by: Contango | February 12, 2008 at 06:28 PM