Buying Panic is not a term coined by ZH. Buying Panic is actually one of the stages of a manic market.
When a market goes up this fast, it usually doesn’t have the legs to stand for very long. This is not the sign of the “good market” where people move their assets back in. It is a sign of folks rushing to catch up. Usually the only ones who make out are the very first in. That would have been a couple of days ago.
People rushing to buy now will be rushing soon for the doors. They are most likely over margined and looking for the fast dollar. When it turns south...they will panic to get out.
There are a lot of things going on right now. The direct conversion of Chinese Currency into Rubles and Indonesian currency. The price of oil is killing Russian exports, and thus their economy. This crazy stuff in Japan, the pressure on banks in Europe—25% of whom could not pass their stress test, and finally, the turning off of the spigots at the Fed.
I cannot imagine that all of this stuff—most of which seems pretty negative—will end with a smoothed out landing of our stock market or our economy.
Back in ‘99 and ‘00 I was a deep believer in dot.com stocks. At that point the wise men were saying, “Its a bubble, watch out. Get out.” I find myself more and more on that side of the game now.
Buying panic is a pretty common feature of Asian equity markets. Asset managers who have gone to cash, or gotten short, get desperately afraid of falling short of the index. US equity managers are less closely tied in fees / pay to indices, and tend avoid this by not going to cash or short in the first place.