The following is an excerpt from Richard Russell's Dow Theory Letters
I read this week's Barron's famous Roundtable discussion very carefully over the weekend. I've read their Roundtable talk-fests for years, but this one was the most argumentative and least conclusive of any that I can remember. I could not see any agreement among the well-known members. Half of the members were bearish, the other half were bullish with many MAYBEs and IFs.
What this meant to me was that I must depend 100% on the action of the stock and bond markets for direction. As long as the stock market continues to act bullishly, I'll remain bullish. Meanwhile the participants of the Roundtable will go round and round. The Roundtable was correctly named.
I read a dozen newspapers every day. And frankly the stories are so dense, complex, and involved (unreadable) that I really can't make sense out of most of them. I get the feeling that the majority of investors, these days, read the newspaper stories in the hope that the latest news will tell them which way the markets are heading. If that's what you read the newspapers for — save yourself the trouble. The market's best forecaster is the market itself. As for the market's action, the market discounts the economic world as it will be six months to a year in the future. The true function of the market is to discount the future.
Selected quotes from the Roundtable — From Jim Rogers — "We are living in a dream state. To have every developed country printing money at the same time is unprecedented." Felix Zulauf — "Thirty-eight countries are pursuing a zero or negative real interest rate policy. I have never seen anything like it." Fred Hickey — "I own a lot of gold stocks. I am not short anything. I don't know when this thing will blow up. The European central bank promised to print unlimited amounts of money, and it suddenly looked like Europe's problems were solved. The Bank of England is in QE6, and England is headed back into recession. Money printing doesn't work. It has been tried for 2,000 years and hasn't worked. It always ends in tears......... The central banks of both countries (Brazil and Mexico) and Korea are buying large quantities of gold. They know that all the developed-market currencies are on a path to destruction."
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