Friday, September 11, 1998

Confessions of a Stock Market Bear
by Rob Peebles ([email protected])

Hello, my name is Robert and I am a stock market bear. There, I've said it. A bear. Not only am I a stock market bear today, I've been a bear for two years. Believe me, it has been no picnic.

I did not become a bear suddenly, but rather drifted into bearishness after our investment club disbanded. Suddenly I found myself out of the market and into a savings account. It wasn't long before I began to associate with others out of the market. Soon, I found myself hanging out in small, independently run banks, talking about CD rates and the magic of compound interest.

But it was my mother-in-law who put me over the edge. She retired from teaching a couple of years ago and began buying stocks in her spare time. If I answered the phone when she called, she'd quickly tell me how much money she'd made and in what stocks. Finally, she asked me what stocks I was buying to secure her daughter's future. I told her we were out of the market. "Oh," she said. She said it as if she'd asked how things were going and I had said, "We're living off grass clippings until I land that job at the new Burger King." But she kept calling.

Finally, after months of updates on Dell, Yahoo! and Microsoft, I snapped. I bought a mutual fund that sold short. I figured I'd show her. I'd show her that overpriced stocks are no place to be for the long term. I'd show her how the real money is made -- shrewdly with thought and foresight. Like I said, it's been no picnic. But I keep a positive outlook by talking with other bears about the prospects for global depression. These conversations boost my spirits and give me the courage to average down. Further down.

I almost called my mother-in-law on Aug. 31, the day of 500-point drop in the Dow. The Nasdaq was down huge. Internet stocks were off double digits. It was a happy, happy sort of day. I was going to ask her how her stocks were doing. After listening to her list of disasters, I figured I'd say something like, "Well, my mutual fund was up 10 percent today. It's short the market, you know! Ha, ha, haaaa!" On the way home in the car I practiced sounding like Dr. Frankenstein just before throwing the switch. "Ha, ha, haaaa."

But I did not call. What if the dip buyers came in again? They're always out there, like trolls under a bridge. They wait for bears to get a taste of profits, then POW! They come in and bid stocks up higher than ever before. It was the dip buyers who had me worried.

So I didn't call and I still haven't. And sure enough, the dip buyers came back. On Tuesday they leapt out from under the bridges, jumped on the back of Alan Greenspan, and rode the market up almost 400 points. But I figure this sort of blind euphoria can't go on forever. (Can it?)

So until the market gets smacked again, please don't call. I'm not picking up the phone.

[Hey Fools, why not pen a Fribble, yourself? We welcome submissions from readers. Just click here and read the "What's a Fribble?" item, pen a short masterpiece, and send it off to TMF [email protected].]

Have a similar tale?
Talk about it in the Fribble Message Folder!