"Headed 2 movies 2 see SALT." New Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Terrell Owens evidently couldn't communicate with his employer about when he'd arrive in training camp, but found time to 'tweet' his followers about his exciting goings on the night before. Not sure why we should care about what T.O. is up to, but we think it important to note that social media like Twitter have become pervasive.  "I don't have a short attention span, I'm just...oooh look a kitty!" --Anonymous  Consider that the tweet, "I am further pressing shorts," made the rounds on Wall Street trading desks last Wednesday. As it was from a fairly well-known trader who supposedly made well-timed moves out of and into the market the past couple of years, the message had enough credibility to be cited as a reason for the pullback that day. Those trying to follow his actions might have had gotten whiplash, however, as on Thursday he tweeted, "I am out of all my trading shorts...emboldened by strength in financials of all kinds--banks, insurance and asset managers," following that up on Friday morning with, "I am back to a market neutral position in this Roy Rogers Market--We are home, home on the range."  There may have been a lot of research behind those trading decisions, but with a tweet limited to 140 characters including spaces, little room is left for elaboration. Of course, this seems to be just fine for many folks as Twitter is simply another vehicle for delivering the sound bites to which we have all become accustomed. Doesn't mean that there aren't dangers in basing decisions on limited info, as we saw when Shirley Sherrod was quickly forced to resign after a selectively-edited video was posted online.  Still, it looks like TV host Ellen DeGeneres has it right when she laments, "Our attention span is shot. We've all got attention deficit disorder or ADD or OCD or one of these disorders with three letters because we don't have the time or patience to pronounce the entire disorder."  Not surprisingly, investment commentary has had to become much more provocative with outrageous prognostications necessary to grab much in the way of attention. To be sure, playing on the twin emotions of fear and greed is nothing new as the latter was targeted with the infamous book Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market, published in 1999.  These days, fear is easier to tap into as last month we heard that at least one follower of Elliott Wave theory projects a triple-digit Dow (yes, a loss of more than 90% from here) by 2016 and that an investment newsletter based on astrology actually questions whether capitalism, democracy, humanity and even Earth will survive the "Cardinal Climax" that began on July 26.  While readers are well aware of our optimism for the long-term prospects of our broadly diversified portfolios of undervalued stocks, we know that there are plenty of headwinds facing the economy and the equity markets, including high unemployment, weakness in housing, massive budget deficits and looming tax increases.  Of course, despite all of the uncertainties, our benchmark index, the Russell 3000, has risen in 13 of the past 17 months, with July returning 6.9%. And while fear levels have subsided, we like that contrarian indicators, such as investor sentiment, mutual fund flows and consumer confidence are in 'buy' territory. Also, corporate profits in Q2 handily beat expectations, valuations remain reasonable and interest rates are still very low.
Market pundits like to sound sensational. How about a doubling in stocks over the next six years? It's not nutty.