Staying Positive: You May Be Right (And I May Be Crazy)

One strange thing about the investment business is that when everything looks darkest, when the pundits are predicting doom and gloom at the max, when you are beginning to feel as you have a hangover that will never end and when the government folks are scratching their heads with wonder and angst … suddenly, inexplicably, things look brighter and better.

As I have suggested before (and it can stand repeating), there are hundreds of thousands of us in the investment business and all of us try to figure out what is going on every day.

Probably, most days, two of us are right, and 999,998 of us are wrong. If you are lucky enough to be one of the one or two who get it right on the right day (Elaine Garzarelli got it right in 1987; she’s now chairman of Garzarelli Capital), it may make your career.

Hardly anyone lose his or her job over being wrong, unless he or she is a trading scammer and gets caught in the bight of a bad trading day (“bight” is a navy term, if you get caught in the bight of a line—“line” is navy talk for rope or hawser—you may lose a leg or be drawn overboard, depending on to what the end is attached).