Going against the panic plunge of August 24th was pretty easy, especially if you heeded the market’s warning message in early July that Mr. Market was going into a period of contraction. The ensuing post August 24th “throwback rally” was also pretty easy to anticipate. From there, however, things have become much more difficult.

Indeed, due to expensive valuations, lack of revenue/earnings growth, slow GDP, China, politics, etc., the stock market had been in a virtual stalemate paralysis until the middle of July, having crossed above/below “go” so many times the only way to make money was to erect a toll gate at “go” (think the game Monopoly). And no wonder, frustration has reigned through the first six months of the year.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets is a book by written by Nassim Taleb that discusses the fallibility of human knowledge. Taleb’s main premise is that modern humans are mostly unaware of the existence of “randomness,” believing that random outcomes are non-random. Randomness is the lack of a pattern, or predictability, in events; a random sequence of events that has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern.

I don’t claim to be an economist, although I do have a degree in economics. Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the economics I learned at university. Also fortunate is that I work with one of the best economists on Wall Street in the form of Scott Brown, Ph.D., but I digress. For the past few months I have been suggesting the economy was doing better, which has brought about cat calls from many of the negative nabobs. My sense has been that GDP was growing by at least 3%.

“Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoof-beats of the great horse Silver. A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-Yo Silver’ the Lone Ranger rides again” . . . except in this case we are not referring to the iconic radio/TV show, The Long Ranger as played by Clayton Moore, but last October. I awoke early on October 15, 2014, looking for more news on what had caused the 18 session bone-crushing decline.

I don’t need to defend Mr. Landry. Mr. Landry does just fine on his own. But coming from me – someone who is my own biggest critic as well as a critic of Wall Street – you best realize that Mr. Landry is in the top 1% of people on Wall Street. He is clear, he is concise, and he is right more than he is wrong. AND more importantly, when he is wrong he doesn’t just sit there and fight the tape. He adjusts unlike [many] of the bonehead strategists on Wall Street; stop reading and listening to him at your own risk.

We begin this morning’s strategy report with the aforementioned quote from the business manager of a large commercial sprinkler company, which has 700+ plus contractors nationwide, because his comments are always a good “window” on the economy. To be sure, nothing really big is ever built without a sprinkler system. I also include said quote because there has been much talk over the past few months of slowing economic statistics telegraphing an impending recession.

Some of y’all know that I spent years working as the Director of Research and Director of Capital Markets for a Baltimore-based brokerage firm. Accordingly, I met a number of professional sports folks through the law firm Shapiro & Olander, which at the time were the attorneys of choice for a lot of professional athletes, as well as the firm I used for our investment banking department’s legal counsel. One of the folks I met was O’s manager Earl Weaver.

Greed is always hard to measure. Certainly we have seen some signs of it in the Big Bio-Bubble and the new issue market.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was an advertising company trying to come up with a video commercial to introduce Buick’s new car. After a number of the ad company’s proposals were turned down, they came up with the idea of the car cruising on a road down the side of a mountain with an eagle superimposed flying over it. Buick loved it! There was, however, one problem; you cannot capture, or tame, an eagle. Therefore it was decided to use a condor.

I used to love watching the History Channel. Back in the good ole days (which actually weren’t too long ago), it would feature real historical content like documentaries, mini-series, and regular programs dedicated to some of the most interesting moments in which human beings have participated. When nothing else seemed to be on the other 300 stations, I could at least count on the History Channel to help kill a few minutes without killing my brain cells in the process.

Reflecting on the first half of 2015, while littered with geopolitical events, shows very little upside progress for the S&P 500 (SPX/2076.78). In fact, my notes of more than 50 years show no other time when the SPX was never up or down more than 3.5% year-to-date (YTD).

I have been traveling a lot recently and this week will be no exception as I am in Victoria, British Columbia currently and am leaving for Vancouver tomorrow. While traveling is exciting and educational, it is also exhausting. Moreover, sleeping in strange beds doesn’t help the exhaustion factor. To be sure, I often find myself suffering from dyssomnia in a fitful sleep accompanied by some pretty strange dreams.

“Rescue Me” is a song sung by Fontella Bass in 1965. The song’s refrain is “Come on, baby, and rescue me. Come on, baby, and rescue me,” a refrain that currently needs to be played on the Street of Dreams.

Holy cow, somebody must have slipped American Pharaoh a “sugar cube” last Saturday as horse and jockey (Victor Espinoza) made the turn into the withering stretch at Belmont Park and pulled away from the rest of the pack. Hopefully, somebody will feed a “sugar cube” to the stock market this week because it certainly needs it.

I always look forward to reading Frederick “Shad” Rowe’s monthly investment letter to his partners. Shad founded Greenbrier Partners, Ltd. In 1985 and has captained the investment fund ever since. He is known as one of the best “stock pickers” on Wall Street, a moniker that is well deserved.

My father first introduced me to Justin Mamis’ work by giving me a few of the books he had written like When to Sell: Inside Strategies for Stock-Market Profits, How to Buy: An Insider’s Guide to Making Money in the Stock Market, and my favorite, The Nature of Risk. Justin penned his last stock market letter at the age of 85 and his work is missed to this day. He was a stock market historian, author, strategist, and a technician’s technical analyst. I quoted him this morning because the stock market this year has been anything but “easy.”

The S&P 500 (SPX/2122.73) has basically been locked in a trading range between 2040 and 2100 since early February of this year. Some technical analysts term the subsequent chart pattern a wedge and others call it a rising wedge. While pundits can debate the difference between the two, the important point is which way said chart pattern will be resolved with either an upside breakout, or a downside breakout.

“The Happening” . . . except in this case I am not referring to the 1967 movie, whose title song was sung by the Supremes, but last Thursday’s “Friends of Fermentation” (FOF) gathering at Bobby Van’s across from the NYSE.

Trading sardines indeed, except I have seen a lot of folks attempting to trade this market over the past few months all to no avail. What has typically happened is that one day they are able to make some money, but the next day they give that profit back.

Spring has definitely sprung here in Florida as pollen is in the air and raindrops fall on my tin roof with the sound of golf balls. “Tra la! It's May! The lusty month of May! That lovely month when ev'ryone goes blissfully astray,” to steal a line from the play Camelot. But many market pundits are worried about the softening economic reports, prompting me to dredge up my annual missive about the book “Being There” by author Jerzy Kosinski. The story revolves around a simple-minded man named Chance “the gardener,” who knows only gardening and what he sees on television.

Plainly there are times for investors/traders to be active. But there are also times for them to be inactive, despite the trait of human nature to be “active;” and, for the past few months inactivity has been the best overall strategy.

According to Wikipedia, “Brobdingnag is a fictional land in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel about Gulliver's Travels whose land is occupied by giants. Lemuel Gulliver visits the land after the ship he is travelling on is blown off course and he is separated from a party exploring the unknown land.” I thought of Brobdingnag as I stared at a chart of the D-J Transportation Average ($TRAN/8605.31) last week, which looks like it is making what a technical analyst would term a giant broadening top, or in my terms a “Brobdingnagian Top?”

Most of you know I spend my days gathering “thin reeds” and try to weave them into a favorable “investment bouquet.” As Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by just watchin’!”

The week began well enough as I arrived Sunday a week ago in Orlando for the 36th annual Raymond James Institutional Investors conference. As previously stated, there were more than 1,000 portfolio managers (PMs) and analysts there to listen to some 300 companies’ presentations. In addition to the PMs and their analysts, our analysts anchored the presentations by the CEOs and CFOs of those companies.

Greetings from Orlando where the Raymond James 36th Annual Institutional Investors Conference is in full swing. At this year’s conference there will be more than 1,000 portfolio managers (PMs) and analysts, as well as more than 300 companies presenting. In a past life I used to attend many of Wall Street’s institutional investors conferences, but have come to like ours the best.

Many of you know that I spend time gathering “thin reeds” and try to weave them into a favorable “investment bouquet.” This is a strategy Fidelity’s Peter Lynch took to its zenith in an era gone by. Recall the story Peter told about how he stumbled into Magellan Fund’s (FMAGX/$96.12) investment in Hanes, when he first heard his wife rave about a new product called pantyhose.

I stopped my rental car in the middle of a cluster of giant sequoia trees while driving to one of my speaking engagements in northern California last week. I have always been overwhelmed with these beautiful “beasts” and last week was no exception. As I lay supine at the base of the behemoth the visual fallacy actually made it look like this monster was indeed growing to the sky. The surreal sensation brought to mind the old stock market axiom, “Trees don’t grow to the sky!”

The big news late last week was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s and French President Francois Hollande’s emergency trip to Russia for peace talks with President Putin. Obviously, the situation in the Ukraine is heating up again or such Herculean efforts would not be undertaken.

We have lost our way as a people and a country when we ignore and/or fail to see the significance of history. King Abdullah and his father King Abdul Aziz al Saud were titans of the modern day middle east that so affected us all. I read about his death in the B section of the local paper after a story about our local nursing home under new management. God, Allah, Adonai ... please help us all.

?Rocky Horror Picture Show? was a satirical film production done as a tribute to the science and horror ?B? movies of the late 1930s through the 1970s. I was reminded of the flick last week when one portfolio manager I saw in Fort Lauderdale said to me, ?The first few weeks of the New Year have been an absolute horror show!?

The transition from one year to the next is always accompanied by a whole host of traditions intended to help people celebrate this annual new beginning. The resolutions, parades, fireworks, football games, food, furniture sales ? they all seem to be experienced in a fresh, optimistic light, like an all-forgiving reset button was hit when that ball dropped on New Year?s Eve.

I met Jerry Goodman, whose nom de plume was Adam Smith, late in my career. He was working at my friend Craig Drills money management firm along with another icon in this business, from an era gone by, namely Al Wojnilower. I have had many conversations with all three of these Wall Street legends around the conference table at Drill Capital Management. Jerry wrote The Money Game (1968), Powers of Mind (1975), Paper Money (1981), and The Roaring 80s (1988), but unfortunately we lost his wisdom on January 3rd of this year .

He said: Jeff, you sure were right in Thursday mornings verbal strategy comments when you said we should get a bounce following Wednesdays 90% Downside Day, but that that bounce should not hold and for the perfect set-up to occur for the Santa Rally would be to have the S&P 500 come back down and travel into the 2000 2010 level.

As most of you know I was in New York City most of last week seeing institutional accounts, doing media and speaking at various events. One of the media appearances was to co-host CNBCs Closing Bell on Tuesday, with the sagacious Sara Eisen, who unsurprisingly gave me the quote of the week. The quote was, Think of it this way, lower oil prices are to America what lower labor costs were to the BRICs!

Year-end letters are always difficult to write because there is a tendency to discuss the year gone by, or worse, try and predict what is going to happen in the New Year. I mean really, at this time last year who predicted Russia would invade Crimea, that ISIS would effectively take over a significant portion of Iraq, or the Republicans would sweep Congress.

Begin with a turkey chilling in a sink for a few hours. Mix in the Bank of Japans shock and awe announcement of a week ago. Add the U.S. unemployment claims that are at a 14-year low and stir well, include housing prices that are better by +6%, fold in the Leading Economic Indicators advancing by 7%, the ECB announcement by Draghi about a bazooka of Quantitative Easing (QE), and the Thanksgiving dinner result . . . new highs for equity prices!

Integrity, Websters dictionary defines it as, The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. Recently the voters of America sent the D.C. crowd a message that they want integrity back in government. Consequently, I viewed the midterm election as a turning point. And, a turning point approaches on December 21st of this year. Thats when the Winter Solstice arrives.

Dash, Dash ... Dot, Dot is all about Morse Code where the dash is three times the duration of the dot. According to Wikipedia, Each character (letter or numeral) is represented by a unique sequence of dots and dashes. Each dot or dash is followed by a short silence, equal to the dot duration.

In the June 26th edition of the Morning Tack, Jeff Saut wrote, I do believe the VIX bottomed last Friday (6/20/14) with an undercut low, much like the undercut low of October 4, 2011 that we identified as the valuation low, and recommended should be bought with the SPX trading back then at 1075. Well that proved to be fitting timing, since from that 6/20 low to the high on Wednesday 10/15, all the VIX did was shoot up about 200%!

In a true demonstration of impeccable and apropos timing given the recent volatility we have experienced, yesterday marked the 27th anniversary of one of the stock markets most infamous and chronicled events. Black Monday, October 19, 1987 was one of those multiple standard deviation occurrences that statisticians will tell you are not supposed to ever really happen, but as is the case more frequently than most realize, it of course did happen, and its impact is still being felt today even as there are fewer and fewer investors around that actually had to suffer through it.

In this business it has been said, Sometimes knowing the right question is more important than actually knowing the answer. Over the years I have found that old Wall Street axiom to serve me well. One example would be reading the footnotes in a companys annual report.

A week ago yesterday I arrived in New York City just in time to have dinner with some friends. Avra Estiatorio is arguably the best Greek seafood restaurant in the city and it is located 20 steps from my hotel of choice, the Hyatt 48 lex, which is aptly named since it sits on the corner of Lexington and 48th street.

If you dont change your indicators for the changing causal relationships you are doomed!

I have been reminded of the Greek mythology character Sisyphus since mid-July as investors tried to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. In this case the boulder in question has been the D-J Industrial Average (INDU/ 17279.74), which since late July has tried seven times to better its all-time high of 17138.20 made on July 16th of this year.

Dallas-based Greenbrier Partners is captained by my friend Frederick E. Rowe, who is fondly referred to as Shad. Now anyone from Virginia is familiar with the fish known as a shad, and are probably familiar with the political event known as the Shad Planking.

In last Fridays Morning Tack I referenced some sage advice from the legendary Dow Theorist Richard Russell of Dow Theory Letters fame.

Evidentially, the lucid dreamers on Wall Street practiced their skills two weeks ago as professional traders were sneaking large buy orders into the equity markets on the closing bell. Simultaneously, the Commitment of Traders Report showed those same traders were dramatically reducing their short sale bets.

I met Arthur, as well as a host of other friends, last Thursday afternoon during my NYC sojourn to see institutional accounts and do media events. Over a scotch, he related the aforementioned story to me. The timing was propitious because another one of our friends had just telephoned to tell us the President was authorizing air strikes against ISIS. After a dinner at Mr. Chows, I went back to my hotel to find the preopening S&P 500 futures printing down roughly 11 points.

s the public always wrong? This is probably the most frequently asked question about the Theory of Contrary Opinion. For a correct answer we need to change the words in the question. Let me put it this way: Is the public wrong all the time? The answer is decidedly, No.