Richard Russell's Contributions

As usual in bear markets, people are looking at the wrong thing. I don’t think the Greek situation will bring on trouble. The market doesn’t wait for trouble, it looks ahead – it discounts. So far, the stock market is snoozing...

For a month, I’ve told subscribers that I believe we’re now entering the third phase of the bull market. Strangely, most market analysts – almost all of whom are considerably younger than I am – are not acquainted with the sentiment phases of a bull market...

A thousand opinions appear daily regarding business and the US economy, all in an attempt to forecast the forthcoming action of the market. There is only one study of the stock market that is worthwhile...

These are four of the biggest threats to the bull market. According to Hugh Johnson Advisors, first is the threat of oil skyrocketing over the turmoil in the Middle East, and natural gas prices soaring as Russia retaliates over U.S. and European trade sanctions.

One of the basics of Dow Theory is the thesis of three psychological phases in both bull and bear markets. In a bull market, which we are now in, the first or initial phase is the early accumulation phase.

The ’80s and '90s were extremely frustrating and unprofitable times for gold investors, yours included. Time after time, year after year, we thought gold was finally getting something going on the upside with never-ending promises of financial doom.

For the first time in history, ALL the major central banks are printing money. One of two things will occur. If they continue to print, their respective currencies will lose their purchasing power, and we'll have inflation or even hyper-inflation.

Here we see the Dow holding persistently and bullishly above its 200-day moving average. How long will this constructive situation last? Ah, if we only knew (I think it will be quite a while).

The unemployment rate dropped to 7.4% last week, the lowest since 2008; yet the report was “a disappointment.” Why? Well first of all, it was hardly all bad news – both the Dow Industrials and S&P 500 once again scored new all-time highs after its release on Friday.

These are not signs of an economy ready to collapse, nor one about to spiral into hyperinflation. Rather, they confirm what the PTI and Dow Theory have been telling us all along: It’s a bull market, and the US is doing a better job than most other countries in recovering from the Great Recession.

So the writing is on the wall. Business and the world economy can't get much better. And the question -- what do we do about it?

Here’s what’s going on with the markets, in my honest opinion. It’s a bull market in stocks, according to both the Dow Theory and the PTI, and has been since mid-2009.

What do billionaires Warren Buffet, John Paulson, and George Soros know that you and I don't know? I don't have the answer, but I do know what these billionaires are doing.

One reasonable investment strategy is to buy stocks when they’re under-valued and sell them when they become over-valued. Another is to buy when the Dow Theory and PTI turn bullish, and then sell when they turn bearish.

What happens when markets get over-bought? The answer is supposed to be: They go down. Yet most of us have been around long enough to know that things don’t always work out as they’re “supposed to.”

Back in 1974 I taught a course at San Diego State University on the stock market with special emphasis on Dow Theory and technical analysis. I had a large class of over 100 students. I also had one outstanding student named Jon Strebler.

So let's face it, we're seeing a currency war, better known as "beggar thy neighbor." And it's all courtesy of the various central banks' ability to create fiat currencies out of thin air. The winner will most likely be the Chinese yuan. The loser will probably be the world's current reserve currency -- the US dollar.

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 just went through the latest issue of Barron's. You can read the various articles any way you like -- they can be interpreted as bullish or bearish.

The action of the big money, the sophisticated money, tends to lead the markets. In view of that, let's ask ourselves what the "big money" is doing now. We hear that classic art pieces like the Klimpt painting and Munch's "The Scream" are going for well over $100 million.