Turtle Investing Blog Turns 1

“Bull Markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria. The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell”

- Sir John Templeton

My blog turns one year old tomorrow, still could not believe I've survived blogging for a year with the big bad bear starring at me everyday. I suppose blogging during bull run will be a lot more fun and look like a genius because any stock will go up. During bear market is different, if I am not careful, every stock mention will go down and it will go down a lot more and faster that you can imagine. But I like to blog during bear market because this extreme test is good for my soul.

I suppose my little Toast Master exercise has made me more confident than a year a ago. Thank you for listening to my mumbling about stock market, sometimes is not so clear - none of it's intended. I won't be publishing a few days as I will be out of pocket.

My two cents on what happened to the US market yesterday. I say that was a good stress test. Many were very disappointed with Geithner's plan but I doubt selling follow through can go on very far compared to fourth quarter 2008. The fear is simply not deep and wide. Number of new lows was only 58 while during the peak of panic selling was more like 2,500 stocks. Asian market started with some panic in the morning but managed to absorb selling relatively easier. More like excuse for correction in my opinion. See below on how hard short sellers have to work to find things to short. See you all soon. Take care.

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The biggest bears in U.S. stocks are losing their conviction after the steepest decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index since the Great Depression.

The number of shares borrowed and sold short on the New York Stock Exchange fell 28 percent last month from the peak in July. Companies in the S&P 500 trade at the lowest multiples of earnings in 18 years. President Barack Obama is working with Congress on a spending and tax-cut plan of about $800 billion to revive the economy, and regulators are imposing stiffer oversight on speculators.

While Seabreeze Partners Management Inc.’s Douglas Kass and David Tice at Federated Investors Inc. say there’s still money to be made betting that food and computer makers will fall, even Marc Faber, who publishes the “Gloom, Boom & Doom Report,” abandoned his so-called short positions. Bill Fleckenstein, who warned of the housing bubble in 2005, closed his 13-year-old bear market fund and bought shares of Microsoft Corp.

“It’d be easier for me to find five stocks I think are going to go up than five stocks I think are going to go down,” said Fleckenstein, who is based in Seattle. “Being short right now just feels like the wrong strategy.”