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Who’s more scared right now, the bulls or the bears?

Cody Willard

Cody Willard

— 2 min read
I’ve been patiently waiting for the emotional spirits that drive the markets, especially when things get as volatile as they’ve been the last month, to play out before covering some of our many shorts or adding more names other than last week’s new purchase to the long side.  And I might be dead wrong, as anybody proffering a short-term market outlook can be, but I think we are finally getting close to putting in a meaningful bottom here just below 11,000 — say at about the 10,800 range.  Let’s talk about why and then let’s make a move in the portfolio too.First, because 3-5% intraday movements in the markets are driven more by emotions than anything else and because we’ve had so many 3-5% intraday moves in the last few weeks, let’s talk emotions. The bears are celebrities again, and even though very few bears have caught this downside swing and ensuing volatility very well — the curse of the perma-bear is that they can’t differentiate timing — but they are loud and full of new predictions of new doom.   And the bear websites, the bearish pundits, the bearish hedge funders, are flaunting their genius, even as they wonder how they missed most of the move down.   They’ve now been shorting all rallies and are what they should have been at the top six weeks ago — aggressively net short.   And see, all that short stock out there must be bought back at some point — either lower or higher (or at these levels, too).  The  bears are now outright shorts and they’re cocked and loaded and feeling brave.  
Meanwhile, the bulls are beaten and depressed.  The emails from my (mostly formerly-) bullish money manager friends are full of doubt.  Indeed, most bulls (aka former longs) have been puking up most of their biggest positions to raise cash and try to salvage what was just a few weeks ago a good year but is now probably down 1-10% on the year.  
I used to poll my readers often with the question: “Who’s more scared right now, the bulls or the bears?”  And when the answer to that question is as strong on one side as it is right now — do you know any bears who are scared right now?  Do you know any bulls who are NOT scared right now? — it often coincides with a big turn in the market.   
So I’m going to cover one short position today — the CableVision short.  CableVision got crushed on their most recent earnings report after confirming our thesis that they are losing subscribers to a secular trend of Internet video consumption.   And while I do think the company’s likely to struggle with this trend for a while, I want to lock in our nice profits here and catch out breath a bit.  I’ll probably look to put this or another cable company short back in the portfolio in coming weeks or months.  But with CableVision down as big as it is as fast as it’s fallen recently I want to lock in these gains for now.
Before I go, I’d love to hear from you guys about who you think is more scared right now — the bulls or the bears?  Send me an email to cody@clwillard.com and let me know what you think and I’ll report back our consensus next week.

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