12/26/16: "Quid est Veritas?"
Now we have “The Ministry of Truth”
Try going to any mainstream brokerage firm’s website and access their current market assessment … whether it’s a written report or a recent video.
If you have not done so already after reading or viewing that information, change the dates, ticker symbols and the Fed chairman’s name and see if you could not create a near identical report from 15 or 20 years ago.
Try it, you’ll probably be shocked … then disappointed as you find nothing from these firms has changed in decades. It’s the same old 60% bonds, 40% stocks with maybe the latest fad of "dynamic portfolio re-balancing" or “Smart Beta” thrown in.
However, their game of enforced mediocrity may be coming to an end. As they continue to use data that’s less and less accurate and potentially completely false, the possibility of huge position (market stance) blunders increases. For example, a typical brokerage firm may opine recent unemployment numbers shows us below 5%.
Is that the truth?
No: Unemployment is actually already at or above depression era levels, standing at 22% or higher … not 5% or less.
Robert Prechter, in his book “Conquer the Crash”, predicted the next bear market (that we’re already in) will decimate these firms right along with their clients. Just like Venezuela, there will be two classes: The wealthy and the poor … with maybe a few fragments of middle class left over.
I have friends that are educated professionals. They have watched our research for years. They have seen our correct market calls that are to the day if not the hour.
Intellectually, they see price movement has nothing to do with fundamentals. It’s been proved over and over.
And yet, when I have discussions with them on the market, they continue to quote ‘official’ numbers. For them, breaking away from the propaganda has proved to be impossible. Doing so puts one out on the edge where your performance may look like a genius one day, or idiot the next.
Personally, in my near half-century of experience, 99.999% of the population can’t handle that level of exposure. If you’ve been (or are) in a profession such as a surgeon, flight test pilot (engineer), military Special Forces commander, race car driver and the like, then you know of what we speak. You’re only as good as your last performance … and that was just minutes or seconds ago.
So, how can a mainstream corporate brokerage or money management firm even have a chance at getting it right consistently? More so now that finding accurate ‘official’ data will be next to impossible.
What are they going to tell their clients? That they do not use official numbers for their calculations? Will those (average investor) clients maintain their accounts with such a firm?
However, there's an irrefutable truth in the markets and it does not come from sanctioned sources, but from itself: That truth is the tape …. only the tape.
As the disinformation increases, our objective is, and will be to:
“Drill [ourselves] into the right mental attitude: to stifle [our] emotions, such as fear, anxiety, elation, recklessness; to train [one’s] mind into obedience so that it recognizes but one [market] master – the tape”: Wyckoff, 1910
The truth is in the tape. Read it effectively, and that's all that’s required.
Wyckoff quote used with permission from Cosimo Classics