Comments on: Barron’s Cover: Where’s The Little Guy? http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html Freshly squeezed market commentary & analysis Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:24:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.2 by: chaves.ca: Stock Market: Chronicles of a Stock Crash http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-34813 Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:28:52 +0000 http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-34813 [...] The internet traffic directed to major electronic retail stock-brokers decreases (Babak, Barron's) [...] […] The internet traffic directed to major electronic retail stock-brokers decreases (Babak, Barron’s) […]

]]> by: Google Trends: Hunting For Sentiment Data http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-26008 Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:20:22 +0000 http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-26008 [...] Which is why I love finding novel ways of measuring sentiment. One that I’ve already written about is the “sheeple index” which is a measure of retail broker’s web traffic. [...] […] Which is why I love finding novel ways of measuring sentiment. One that I’ve already written about is the “sheeple index” which is a measure of retail broker’s web traffic. […]

]]> by: Babak http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-9841 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:52:31 +0000 http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-9841 Rob, the infusion isn't a Bam! one time thing. It is a drawn out process. The retail investor will slowly leg into the market. The final blow-off or the popping of a bubble mania is when the participation of the "dumb" money reaches a climax. But until that happens, the bull market will need the incremental entry of new capital. Of course, the retail investor is here in the market. We just don't have many of them. As for their lack of activity being behind the lack of volatility, perhaps. I would argue however that the massive program buying/selling which parses prices to finer and finer levels is to blame. That and the gargantuan amounts of money being run that sell volatility to create a bond like yield. Rob, the infusion isn’t a Bam! one time thing. It is a drawn out process. The retail investor will slowly leg into the market. The final blow-off or the popping of a bubble mania is when the participation of the “dumb” money reaches a climax. But until that happens, the bull market will need the incremental entry of new capital.

Of course, the retail investor is here in the market. We just don’t have many of them. As for their lack of activity being behind the lack of volatility, perhaps. I would argue however that the massive program buying/selling which parses prices to finer and finer levels is to blame. That and the gargantuan amounts of money being run that sell volatility to create a bond like yield.

]]> by: Rob http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-9837 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:54:13 +0000 http://www.tradersnarrative.com/barrons-cover-wheres-the-little-guy-1178.html#comment-9837 You said that the bull market will need an infusion of capital to sustain itself, but wouldn't that just make the eventual downtrend more painful and severe? What I got from the article is that dumb money tends to come in at the end of a bull cycle, bid up stocks to outrageous and unsustainable levels (as what happened in the 90s) which causes the market to fall hard. If the retail investor never shows up will we have a soft landing as earnings growth slows? I tend to believe an absence of the retail investor makes the market less volatile; but I could be completely wrong. You said that the bull market will need an infusion of capital to sustain itself, but wouldn’t that just make the eventual downtrend more painful and severe? What I got from the article is that dumb money tends to come in at the end of a bull cycle, bid up stocks to outrageous and unsustainable levels (as what happened in the 90s) which causes the market to fall hard.

If the retail investor never shows up will we have a soft landing as earnings growth slows? I tend to believe an absence of the retail investor makes the market less volatile; but I could be completely wrong.

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