24 replies to this topic

[spielchekr]

Hey, this is good stuff. TSP talk is on a Sell again, BTW. I'm now tracking it and TheStreet.com.

But it appears it was also on a sell the past two weeks as the market bounded much higher. These polls are all over the place and bulls and bears alike can find some solace to fit their particular bias. Her's one for those with a bullish bias.

http://www.marketwat.....3B3A10C3F77F}

I wonder if Hulbert has the latitude to offer his contrarian insight about a poll from his own readership?

[jawndissedi]

Here's my take Gary. The stock market -like horse racing, boxing and going to church- is falling out of the consciousness of Joe Sixpack. A generation ago he would've known IBM's closing price like I would have know who the Welterweight champ was. Now no one cares. Real Estate is the publics market of choice. The white collar guy with the 401k plan is passive (these days the guy is just as easily a gal and she's clueless about the market). The seamstress who lost her shirt (pun intended) in 1929 is now a Mexican who doesn't know Dow from 'ole. Does the demographic of todays urban news viewer care about equities? Stock picking is the domain of those white, male, 50 and over. It's a shrinking universe. Hence the media doesn't see market highs as newsworthy.

Along the same line we'll never see manic, rampant direct public participation again. That died in March 2000 and like Bruce Springsteen's lyrics about those factory jobs, "they ain't never coming back."

The smartest comment I've read on this board in some time. Those looking for a repeat of sentiment readings like those seen in early 2000 are bound to be frustrated.

[spielchekr]

Quick Lite review of polling parameters: http://en.wikipedia....ki/Opinion_poll

The Market Perception Community Sentiment poll of INDU http://www.marketwat...Perception/indu (I'll coin it MPCS poll) now has over 1100 participants coming from the MarketWatch readership pool, thus a error of +/-3% can be assigned. Still a 94% bull /6% bear ratio. Of course we can suspect coverage bias since all participants are self-motivated to participate (like any other such market poll like AAII), but how can we can prove that, and what bias would that be? And coverage bias can actually be a good thing for reading sentiment. I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water because of that, because anyone who reads MarketWatch and participates in its poll seems likely to participate in the market fluctuations, like AAII and all the rest.

We are talking about a survey from the readership of the #1 financial blog per ValueWiki http://blog.valuewik...-finance-blogs/, so this is not data to be sniffed at IMHO.

Edited by spielchekr, 15 July 2007 - 09:28 AM.

[SemiBizz]

Here's my take Gary. The stock market -like horse racing, boxing and going to church- is falling out of the consciousness of Joe Sixpack. A generation ago he would've known IBM's closing price like I would have know who the Welterweight champ was. Now no one cares. Real Estate is the publics market of choice. The white collar guy with the 401k plan is passive (these days the guy is just as easily a gal and she's clueless about the market). The seamstress who lost her shirt (pun intended) in 1929 is now a Mexican who doesn't know Dow from 'ole. Does the demographic of todays urban news viewer care about equities? Stock picking is the domain of those white, male, 50 and over. It's a shrinking universe. Hence the media doesn't see market highs as newsworthy.

Along the same line we'll never see manic, rampant direct public participation again. That died in March 2000 and like Bruce Springsteen's lyrics about those factory jobs, "they ain't never coming back."

The smartest comment I've read on this board in some time. Those looking for a repeat of sentiment readings like those seen in early 2000 are bound to be frustrated.

And that's where volume comes in to the picture... because it is not a measure of thought and opinion but accurately measures actions rather than words... words can be faded but action cannot.

[OEXCHAOS]

I'll tell you, you get a very discrete idea about the action from sentiment. A sell signal is a good one if the market falls 2% almost immediately, even if it rallies 3% two days later. Volume will tell you when you're not likely to get any more on the downside, or when you are. I can honestly say that I've sidestepped at ton of losers by watching the volume. In fact, it's clear that it's a major tell and that one has to be on the look out for big shifts all day long if one has a position on, especially late in the ES. Mark