, Columnist
Calling a Top in Stocks Has Become a Cottage Industry
No one wants to get caught flat-footed as they did during the financial crisis.
The bears are stirring.
Photograph: Jean-Francois MonierThis article is for subscribers only.
There’s a simple reason the future always feels uncertain but the past seems relatively orderly: No one has any idea what the future holds, while hindsight allows us to assume that the past was more predictable that it actually was.
Take the Great Financial Crisis. The majority of investors, economists, policy makers and regulators were completely blindsided by the worst economic and stock-market downturn since the Great Depression. Yet when these same people look back at that fateful 2007-2009 period, it seems many of them now believe that they knew it was coming and called it in advance.