Scaling The Wall of Worry

The stock market has demonstrated a unique ability to remain clear eyed and cold hearted as it scaled a wall of worry during the course of its venerable history. The cautions and warnings over the years by so many astute and famous prognosticators of market direction have been as empty as the balance sheets of the dot com IPO's of late 1999.

As the financial markets have once again re-established their footing as the equilibrium of capitalism many strategists and economists have begun to trumpet the storm alarms of a rising a tide that foretells yet another hurricane soon to come ashore along the banks of Wall and Water Streets.

There is a new found discipline that has risen from the ashes of the 2008 market meltdown, that being a taxi meter correlation of commerce and economic data translating, lockstep, into market directive. In a sense it is as if many Wall Street strategists have been baptized in the water of evangelism, the way preachers use the Bible to predict where and when an arcane passage will come to fruition.

The stock market will continue to rise in a worried staccato manner, slowly tacking on gains that appear to be pushing it over the precipice, only to move dangerously higher in full view of so many naysayers predicting a calamitous end.

Markets will go up until there is no more worry and all the dangerous have been rationalized away. Nothing creates buying like a rising stock price. And then when all are nicely tucked away in their portfolios of promise and the bear market calls have been silenced by an all clear sign "that its different this time" chant, the bottom will fall out.

The Bull wants to go up with as few in as possible just as the Bear wants everyone aboard. It's the ritual of market movements. Keep your stocks and add to the ones that are making new highs and do it when it makes your stomach knot up. When you become confident and your portfolio is the driver of your future plans, sell everything and buy canned goods as the anchor to your asset allocation model.

But for now stay long. Worry brings higher prices.