Bull or Bear for 2009 ?

Bear rally or the end of the crisis ? Has the bottom been reached ? Give your opinion !

To me, the hit will come from the banking system (again) where nothing is solved and the SME where we'll see loads of defaults on leveraged loans issuers.

lol i am 50% of the bulls!

I have changed my mind of course and now am bull
Fortunately being wrong in the poll doesn't cost money

Its funny, I see lots of contraian news more often in the headlines lately. Its weird, its as if everyone is waiting for the big correction to come, but no one is willing to ignite the fall.... hmm, the bigger they are the harder they fall... so they say.

Snapman wrote:

Its funny, I see lots of contraian news more often in the headlines lately. Its weird, its as if everyone is waiting for the big correction to come, but no one is willing to ignite the fall.... hmm, the bigger they are the harder they fall... so they say.

In a contrarian view, you can be sure that if everyone is waiting for the big correction, it will never come
This being said, I'm not sure being bearish now (and since a few months) is a contrarian view

A few months ago i tried to explain to my (former) boss that while everybody is bearish, it will keep going up : he just thought that I was crazy...

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I still think that something will happen. So Im just bullish at a half. The market is quite volatile in recent days, and i see that sentiment drove strongly the market rather than better performances released.

hanguyenson wrote:

I still think that something will happen. So Im just bullish at a half. The market is quite volatile in recent days, and i see that sentiment drove strongly the market rather than better performances released.

yea earnings have been some what mixed but a bit more bullish, today markets are getting slaughtered... i think this might be temporary sentiment... or so i hope. Either way with all the volatility it wouldn't hurt to be in cash IMHO (in my humble opinion).

http://erikmarketview.blogspot.com/2009/10/zoom-zoom.html Erik definitely has some interesting insights on the markets for the rest of the year... check it out

W... Didn't realize the peak in the middle was so high

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Wilbur Ross Sees ‘Huge’ Commercial Real Estate Crash

By John Gittelsohn and Thomas R. Keene

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross
Jr., said today the U.S. is in the beginning of a “huge crash
in commercial real estate.”
“All of the components of real estate value are going in
the wrong direction simultaneously,” said Ross, one of nine
money managers participating in a government program to remove
toxic assets from bank balance sheets. “Occupancy rates are
going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization
rate -- the return that investors are demanding to buy a
property -- are going up.”
U.S. commercial property sales are forecast to fall to the
lowest in almost two decades as the industry endures its worst
slump since the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s,
according to property research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc.
The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices already have
fallen almost 41 percent since October 2007, Moody’s Investors
Service said Oct. 19.
Billionaire George Soros, speaking today at a lecture
organized by the Central European University in Budapest, said
a “bloodletting” may be coming for leveraged buyouts and
commercial real estate.
“The American consumer will no longer be able to serve as
the motor for the world economy,” said Soros, 79.
His comments came in the same week that Capmark Financial
Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after
originating $60 billion in commercial property loans in 2006
and 2007.
‘Extreme Caution’
Ross, the 71-year-old chairman and chief executive officer
of WL Ross & Co. LLC, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio
that he would use “extreme caution” before putting money into
commercial real estate, especially office space, because
properties are losing tenants.
U.S. office vacancies hit a five-year high of almost 17
percent in the third quarter, while shopping center vacancies
climbed to their highest since 1992, according to the property
research firm Reis Inc.
“I think it’s going to take quite a while to work itself
out,” Ross said.
As of Oct. 15, Ross said he had spent less than $100
million of at least $1.5 billion available to him under the
Public-Private Investment Program, an investment pool of
private and government money for purchasing distressed assets
from financial institutions.
Ross used the funds he spent so far to purchase
residential mortgage-backed securities, he said in a Bloomberg
Television interview.
Corus Investment
WL Ross was among a group of firms that agreed Oct. 6 to
buy $4.5 billion of Corus Bankshares Inc.’s real estate.
Starwood Capital Group LLC and TPG led the group to buy the
assets of the Chicago-based lender, which was seized by federal
regulators Sept. 11 after its investments in construction loans
for condominiums went bad.
In 2007, Ross ventured into the declining residential
property market, winning an auction for the home-loan servicing
unit of Melville, New York-based American Home Mortgage
Investment Corp. He agreed to pay between $435 million and $500
million for the right to collect payments and maintain escrow
on about $45.3 billion of home mortgages.
Making Lists
Dubbed the King of Bankruptcy by clients during his
quarter century at the Rothschild investment bank, Ross entered
the U.S. home mortgage business as an increasing number of
borrowers quit making payments and profits sank in loan
servicing.
“Our methodology is to make a great big list: What’s
every thing we can think of that’s either wrong with the
industry or that we just plain don’t like about it,” Ross said
today.
“Then we start work on another list. If we had control of
this industry, what would we do to fix each one of those
problems?” he said. “Once we feel that there is a reasonable
likelihood that the second chart kind of equals the first
chart, that’s when we get ready to do something.”

CRE the next subprime

bulls are gaining

Bear Trap in the future...

Snapman wrote:

bulls are gaining

lol i meant on the votes