Do you ever hear what you want to hear, and little else? Are you a glass is half-full or half-empty type of person? Do you find silver linings in dark clouds, or the other way around?
Let me answer these questions for you with: “it depends on the situation, of course!” After all, few of us are either overly pessimistic or optimistic all of the time. In fact, we tend to send such people away “for their own good,” medicate them heavily, and discount their opinion to the point of irrelevance. A couple of weeks ago, I was struggling with some of the economic data, and puzzling over the strength of the stock market rally in the 1st Quarter. Yeah, things are okay, but are they so okay as to precipitate an 11% rally? In such a short period of time? I wanted to be “all in’; I wanted to be that positive, but the data kept drawing me back to the middle. So, I called a friend of mine, who works in a relatively esoteric segment of the financial industry, for his opinion; knowing full well he leans a little to the bearish side…Read On…