I am sorry to hear this and hope that you have sent your email to your local and national press as well.


Fullermoney Historic Archive: FM21Late January 1986 - The comment I hear from people who read these early letters, is how relevant they can be to today's markets. I agree. Not having read them myself since they were published, I approach them 25 years later as one does with a silver reunion at the old school - feelings of apprehension, hope and morbid curiosity.

Here are a couple of early examples from FM21's opening, applicable to the 2008-2009 bear market low and aftermath:

The biggest bull market gains usually follow an avalanche of selling as bearish sentiment reaches hysterical proportions. There are many examples to prove this point so I'll just mention two stock market classics. Remember end-'74, when the worst global stock market crash since '29 caused many sagacious investors to conclude that "capitalism as we know it is dead"? That spawned the best recovery for years and some big capitalization stock markets haven't had a decent bear market since.

For a relevant special situation example, we have the Hong Kong Index which has nearly tripled following panic over the island's future thirteen years before it would cease to be a British colony. Near the market lows editorials in leading newspapers were concluding that Hong Kong was finished and that communist China would inherit a ghost town in 1997 (a view I first refuted in FM3, May '84).

The timely panic opportunity discussed in FM21 was the South African gold mine sector where yields of 12% or more, underpinned by what were still the world's largest reserves at the time, were available.


Quote of the week - On gambolling, and for "lion", substitute bear:

"Hares can gambol over the body of a dead lion."
Publilius Syrus