The Tortoise and the Hare

VANCOUVER (Silver Gold Bull) -- It's easy to imagine readers glancing at this title and asking what possible relevance could this have with respect to modern markets? Even if there was some relevance, what could adult investors learn from this old children's fable?

To answer those questions properly requires briefly summarizing the fable. We had a Great Race between a quietly confident Tortoise and an arrogant, condescending Hare. When the race began, the Hare immediately sprinted way ahead of the much slower Tortoise. However, over-confidence took over and the Hare began showboating and goofing off, and the Tortoise caught up.

This caused the Hare to once again sprint to a large lead, before again succumbing to over-confidence. The pattern repeats itself, with the Hare eventually goofing off once too often, allowing the Tortoise to cross the finish line first. The moral of this story: Slow and steady wins the race.

So what relevance does "The Tortoise and the Hare" have for modern markets? Throughout the entire history of human investing, "slow and steady wins the race" has been the dominant principle of investing...until the last 15 years. That marked the approximate turning point from which time the fraud-peddlers of Wall Street and their accomplices in the corporate media have brainwashed the investor sheep into forgetting that basic principle.

Instead of "slow and steady wins the race" these modern-day con artists have programmed the sheep to embrace a new mantra: "Bet on the Hare." This massive paradigm shift in global markets (and the global economy) becomes much more apparent when we shift from metaphorical analysis to specifics.

"Slow and steady wins the race" is the rational for two of the most time-honored principles of investing: "buy and hold" and "buy low, sell high."

We know the first principle is dead because the charlatans who manage most investing for the sheep have explicitly proclaimed again and again (following the Crash of 2008) that "buy and hold is dead." We can see that even the second principle has been de-programmed from the minds of the sheep once we analyze what "bet on the Hare" actually represents.

In the fable, the Hare was both the clear race favorite and capable of sprinting to large leads, apparently at will. Astute readers should now be able to figure out who these new investors are who consistently "bet on the Hare." They are the momentum players (i.e. momentum chasers).