This is an amusing story from today's Wall Street Journal; but before we go through it let's review 2 specific type of "conventional wisdom" that was shoved down our throat by pundits in the late fall through winter - the "follow the smart money" thesis. We've had call after call after call (after call) about "it's time to load up financials since it cannot get worse and the bottom is in"' this started last summer in fact. All those pundits have frankly destroyed their clients accounts. They have used multiple reasons over the quarters. but one flavor of the day was "smart money is buying, so you should to".... smart money being mostly Arab money (but some Asian money as well). In fact after a sell off in November 2007, we set the stage for a December rally when Citibank sold a stake (at terrible ...

The wildest and craziest market is the one we have on our hands. Friday’s action saw lots of panic but it also saw large cap oil related stocks actually fall as crude oil pushed about $138. Large capitalization oil stocks like CVX and XOM closed down on the day on heavier turnover. Even HES was unable to break into new high territory, it too closed on its lows. Normally, these names help the S&P 500 and Dow Jones when oil moves higher, Friday was not the case. It was the small capitalization oil related names that did well. The NYSE indexes look real unhealthy at this point in time, the only healthy looking indexes are: NASDAQ, NASDAQ 100, S&P 400, S&P 600, and Russel 2000. This market is proving that the environment is for small cap oil related names. Most professionals are not ...