[Steven W.]

poster is referring to contrarian reasoning on the various markets - that being the dynamics are such that when the herd is moving one way it's often a good contrarian indicator a counter-trend is likely to develop, wavering between points when the markets are over-sold (as they'd gotten right before the war) to over-bought (the point we reached, corrected once & now hover around) - a contrarian will try to avoid moving in tandem with the market sentiment and rather try and exploit buying opportunities that arise when gloom & doom pervades to the same degree the people are willing to pay unreasonable amounts for the same product, albeit commodity, equity / stock or other trading instrument.

[SierraWasp]

In other words... "Buy on the bad news and sell on the good," right?

Well these days, after CNN confesses to screwing with the news to whore after a despot and we find Walter Chronkite narrating a PBS show called "Avoiding Armeggon," what's a contrarian to do? Plus Chronkite should never have been "the most trusted man in America!"

I think the market is filled less with sentimental types and more with "oblivious to the obvious" types, these days!!!