NOTHING THAT COULD GO WRONG DID!

we won the war. we got a tax cut. we havent had a terror attack on U.S. soil. the FED has established omnipotence over inflation and DEFLATION and has "many tools" to deal with whatever else could cause economic problems. oil is flowing at less than $30/barrel. SARS is under control. AMR averted bankruptcy. wall street "settled" the largest fraud case in the history of the world, without being shut down. india and pakistan renewed political relations. north korea stopped threatening to mass produce nukes. israel and the palestinians are on the "road" to peace. and the bear market ended. did i forget anything?

now that all the uncertainty of the uncertainties is out of the way, we can all get back to hopeful forecasts and cautious optimism. ah, forget all this "hopeful" and "cautious" stuff, the market is clearly trying to tell us something about the future and its all good. nasdaq stocks back to 1990's multiples and investors and portfolio managers are back to chasing performance. valuations are getting "stretched" but there is no lack of stragtegists changing their tune about what is really happening in the economy. so with the wall street machine back in business, investors have just about forgotten how they lost all their money and are back to "buying the bull" and speculating with what money they have left for fear they will miss the new bull market.

used to be that everthing that could go wrong would go wrong and never has everything that could go wrong gone right!? except for now. scary to think that this may all be a perception rather than a reality. as bad as the news and problems seemed to be just a few short months ago, is as good as it is now. or as some would say, "less bad". it is all relative and as the optimists want us all to do, think positive and good things will happen, they hope.

in every single forecast by every single forecaster, hope is the dominant verb used to modify every single forecast of good things to come. with the added hedge of "if there is another terror attack, all forecasts are off". but with the country under an "orange", or high risk, alert of a terror attack, how can a forecast ignore that warning and revoke the outlook if a terror attack were to occur? who cares. stocks are cheap and cars are cheaper. 0% financing is available and being used in boatloads to buy well, eveything including boats.

in any event, momentum is back for not only stocks but for the president and for world peace. if this momentum continues and is not just a "relief" from all the bad news from the past 2-3 years, then this could really get exciting. on the other hand, if this is all just a pause in a long term decline of geopolitical harmony and economic prosperity, then the next batch of news will be percieved very badly and all the momentum will reverse in a very bad way.

for now, enjoy the warm and fuzzy springtime feelings and smell the flowers. if the good news and hopeful optimism fades for some reason(s), things will get very bad very fast. and not many things need to go wrong to put us right back to the days of gloom from last october. once again, i'll hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

have a grateful day!
larry