Despite bizarro Fly’s bullish Bear proclamations, we are absolutely not in the clear yet. But he was kidding so I guess that is obvious.

The assholness of the market became clear in late Dec by the breadth.

I’m sorry if the magic of the time machine has been partially revealed.  I’m not trying to show how the magician does his tricks, and besides, it’s only a minute aspect of the complexities of time travel.

The number of stocks making new highs to lows was bearish. The narrowness of leadership was bearish. Tech and Ag, and that’s it, remember? Remember how hard we fought for a retail based xmas rally?

On Shed’s latest post, a commenter said he thought [[DE]], among others, would regain momentum. I firmly believe the old leaders will not be new market leaders. They have broken down too much. Any stock which has fallen more than 25% off a high, likely set in Dec., fits the bill of a stock that I don’t see recovering. Others like MOS remain bullish but in limbo.

A significant majority of the Chinese burritos are dead. Many former leading stocks, as Shed pointed out with DE, are dead. Dry shipping is dead.

Even a stock which has solid fundamentals, like my favorite, [[fwlt]] may be dead. Sure, it’s bouncing, but unless it can retake an average or old high, it means little.

We are no longer, on any measure, oversold. Complacency is rampant…sovereign funds will buy our shit, cocaine is free if you work in financial services, and Uncle Ben will make it rain.

Everyone has their own method…mine is I won’t keep long term holds in a bear market. New leadership will emerge. It is impossible to predict who it will be, maybe retailers as Cramer predicted. I am not guessing right now.

You sell stocks when they seem best. That’s the plan. XYZ could grow 30% for 5 yrs but if it marks a deceleration of sales growth seen in the last three, the stock will get shitcanned faster than your deadbeat uncle with gravy stains on his lapel. I suspect this is the case with many of the old favorites. The still have massive growth ahead by most metrics, but inexperienced investors assume the stock growth will preform in kind.

HANS, perhaps the most amazing growth stock of the millennium, rallied for 3 years in a row and tacked on 8,000% in gains before encountering this problem in the fourth year.

You certainly could have bought it at 30 and sold at 60 (exactly what happened if you followed my quest for Java video), but the point is that it was a market leader no more.

DNA suffered a similar fate. Maybe AAPL is due. Three years seems the be the approximate max for how long a stock will rally. It doesn’t mean it can’t go higher, but not the way it once did.  It doesn’t matter that AAPL is a “nifty long term hold.” Or that they have huge growth ahead for a ton of reasons.  AAPL isn’t even the most profound example, but this proves that at some point they all fail.

Those with patience will make tons of trading the new leadership–the FMCNs at 20, and the TNHs at 20. There are many out there waiting to emerge and when they do, the godly folks at iBank will tell you.