On December 13, Denzel Washington hit the nail on the head when he said:
If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed.
If you DO read the paper, you’re misinformed…
We live in a society now where it’s just “get it out first!”
We don’t care who it hurts.
We don’t care who we destroy.
We don’t care if it’s true.
Just say it!
Sell it.
And I’ve been victim of this same media mentality since I issued my Mea Culpa last week.
Somehow the media has decided that my admission of mistiming the market very short term was a switch from a perma-bear to a bull.
Seriously!?
Do these people read any further than their nose?
What about common courtesy or due diligence?
So far, only one media personality has phoned me for an interview on this so-called switch, and when I explained what I’m about to explain to you – in the hopes to be crystal clear about this – the interview turned into a non-starter!
How much more clearly can I say this?
You can see in the original article, (excerpt below), that I was pretty clear when I sent this note out.
I still believe the markets are due for a massive correction. Nothing has changed on that front.
Me going from “perma-bear” to “bull” couldn’t be further from the truth. And I am anything but a perma-bear if you look at my forecasts back to the 1980s forward.
Yes, this delusional Trump rally looks real for now. But it also looks more clearly like a final blow-off or 5th wave rally from the third and final bubble since March 2009 that is only likely to last months at best, not years.
Nothing has changed in the fundamentals of aging in demographic trends, massive debt burdens, and the imminent Italy debt default and the uber-Chinese real estate bubble burst.
Nothing has changed in the trends my four key cycles are currently moving through that all point down into early 2020. This has only occurred twice in the last century: in the early 1930s and early-t0-mid 1970s.
Nothing has changed in the economic season we’re living in right now. It’s still winter, and will be for at least another six years, and the worst of my cycles hits in the next three years.
My admission was that the bubble burst is taking longer than I had thought possible. That’s it. I even allowed for a slight new high in stocks in 2016… it just looks like a more substantial high on the “Trump” factor, with him promising near 4% growth – and pigs can fly!
I still believe there will be a massive market crash that will sweep the globe, now even more so and from higher heights… yes, an even greater bubble. And what do bubbles do? They burst, and violently.
It’s just that, while Trump’s election was a surprise, the market’s reaction was mind blowing. Believe you me… even the “smart money” I monitor on the Traders of Commitments report at COTbase.com totally missed this rally as well. It was a surprise across the board.
But now that the markets are believing Trump can instantly create 3% to 4% growth again, it’s up to the real economy to prove he can’t… and you know where I stand on that one. This rally could last weeks or months, but not years!
In fact, this delusional rally only proves how bubbly this market is. The higher it goes, the harder it will fall… our downside targets have not changed: 5,000 by early 2020 and 3,800 or lower by late 2022. Fundamental trends don’t change: human delusions around them do!
So I join Denzel in calling out the media: Get your message straight. Tell the truth! Quit playing on extreme stories: like perma-bear turns to perma-bull.
Harry
Follow me on Twitter @HarryDentjr
P.S. Here’s something else the media got wrong. How could anyone call me a perma-bear when I was the most bullish economist from the mid-to-late 1980s into 2007! Just goes to show you that the mainstream media of today is completely unreliable. And anyone who is a perma-bull or bear is an idiot, as everything goes in cycles… period! The greatest boom in history will turn into the greatest bust. It’s Newton’s third law of physics: equal and opposite reactions… Period!
