It’s Just the Stock Market. Please Calm Down.
Both bulls and bears are expending a lot of reputational capital to defend their postions.
The bulls and the bears are brawling.
Photographer: Jeff Haynes/Getty Images
It’s ugly. I’ve been in the markets for almost 20 years, and I’ve never seen such a hostile relationship between stock market bulls and bears. It’s getting personal. People are getting unfollowed and blocked on Twitter. Reputational capital is a bit like real capital in that it is to be conserved and not spent too foolishly. But people have been spraying it all over the internet — with potentially disastrous results.
The divide can be seen in the American Association of Individual Investors survey, which shows the percentage of respondents who are "neutral" on the outlook for stocks falling toward historical lows. In other words, people either have very strong bullish or very strong bearish leanings. There is no middle ground.