AAII – Crunching the Numbers
Whether it’s The Wall Street Journal (“Investor Survey Says: Bet Oppositely”: December 9, 2010), Barron’s Magazine (“Everyone's Bullish and That's Bearish”: December 11, 2010) or right here on numerous occasions at The Prudent Speculator, the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) weekly Sentiment Survey has garnered a lot of attention.
John Buckingham
The Taxman Cometh
Of life’s two certainties, it seems that death can’t get any worse, but taxes are nearly certain to become more onerous as we go forward. The federal estate tax (the ‘death tax’) is still slated to disappear completely in 2010 (but return to pre-2001 levels in 2011), meaning that there is one last major tax benefit available (not exactly one anyone wishes to claim) for the very wealthy, but the tax situation no doubt has raised concerns for stock market participants.
Sentiment-al Journey
While the widely-followed blue-chip benchmark has since pulled back into four-digit territory, 10,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Average didn’t generate much excitement. To be sure, the anchors on CNBC and the floor traders at the New York Stock Exchange donned Dow 10,000 caps for the cameras and the event definitely headlined the mainstream news, but the financial media was surprisingly quick to pan the accomplishment. Looking at a couple of columns in the press penned in the aftermath of the crossing on October 14, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Dow 10,000: A Caution Sign for Investors,” while CNNMoney admonished, “Don’t Trust Dow 10,000.”