Antony’s Life Blog

Many people are wondering whether current bull market is a real bull market. The S&P 500 index has been up more than 30% since its March low. The index of my home country, Indonesia, has been up more than 70% since its October low. We have seen one of the best rallies in history.

The $1 million question is: where do we go from here? Are we going to test March low? Nobody knows… (I guess). What we can do is comparing the current recession with previous ones. New York Times has a very nice interactive chart to compare current bear market with 1932, 1942, 1974, 1987 and 2002.

Bespoke Investment Group also has released another nice chart about 2 weeks ago comparing current bear market with 1938.

What’s my prediction? Based on the picture from Bespoke, I think we still have to test our low.

I spent this weekend “joining” a finance course from Professor Shiller, Yale University. No… no… I didn’t go to Yale University. I just “watched” the course online on Academic Earth.

For those who don’t know, Professor Shiller is an American academic, economist and best-selling author. He is quite popular these days after the housing burst in the US. He (with his two other economists) introduced Case-Shiller Index to track house pricing.

The course is very interesting, especially for me who come from a totally different world. There are 26 lectures in total, discussing about banking, insurance, stocks, options as well as financial crisis.

(Picture is from stock.xchng.)

I have just written a new post in my other blog, CanadianInvestmentBlog.com, about my stocks pick for 2009. There is a little contest among financial bloggers in Canada to pick 4 stocks to be invested in 2009. We can only pick 4 stocks (not more). Here is mine:

• NYSE:VYM -> After all, high-yield dividend stocks are still a good option this year due to market uncertainty.
• NYSE:PBW -> Obama is a fan of clean energy. He is going to invest $150 billion in clean technology in the next 10 years.
• TSE:HEU -> Crude oil is so cheap now (dropped more than 70% since its peak). I don’t expect oil to continue to be this cheap for the rest of the year.
• NYSE:EEM -> This is my contrarian pick. Emerging market has been hit very hard by recent stock market crash. People are running away from emerging market stocks. What does it mean? It is time to buy.