This was from November 28, when everyone was anxious about the Fed starting to taper, and the talking heads were all predicting a vast sell-off when it happened. Brittlerock, in a post addressed to me talking about when to sell, on the MF SA Investing Philosophy board, wrote the following:
This plagues me. I, like you, am retired. I have income other than market, but lately I’ve been getting very uncomfortable. It seems that the Fed’s QE policy is propping up the bull and the moment someone gets a whiff of a policy change it’s going to unravel in a big way.
I responded:
I think that tapering of the QE has been anticipated for so long that it won’t surprise anyone. The market is so expected to go down that it may even go up. It also won’t be tapered until the Fed is sure that the economy is doing well enough.
After all, there’s been job growth for 44 straight months now, with 7.8 million private sector jobs added. And the deficit is at half the percentage of GDP that it was five years ago, so the economy isn’t as bad off as that. It may actually no longer need all the propping up. Smile. Saul
That’s actually what happened when the Fed tapered in early December, the market went up and kept going up. The lesson is don’t get rattled by the disaster coming headlines that sell papers and columns online. Use your head
Saul