“We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.”

Warren Buffett

The stock market summer haze will thicken for a few more weeks before slowly fading away, and then we’ll be back to worrying about all sorts of things the media has imagined for us.

And if this autumn is anything like the last twenty or so it means we’ll soon see visions of nasty shopping season predictions dancing in our heads – like those anonymous “sources” telling us that shoppers spent 5.3% less than last year between 10:00am and 2:40pm on November 14th.

In Case You Were Wondering…About Tech

Is tech taking over everything?

Well, follow this story link that will take you to an article about the new technologies coming for your barbecue grill. We’ll call it “i-BBQ”.   

I say, thank the Lord above. I’ll finally be able to properly grill a steak outside!

Couple that with the Tesla bot and you get the strange feeling that the world is going to look like a very different place in another five years or so. Robots walking amongst us, sales on subscription prices for your monthly drone rides, signs being installed at malls showing you how to get to the flying taxi LZ’s, and weekend schedules for SpaceX launches as we build further and further into the atmosphere.

In Case You Were Wondering…About Earnings

Will the earnings season actually hold up all through Q2?

Relax. It’s only getting better. 

The year-on-year change for Q2 now surpasses 93%.

And it’s making terms like “all-time highs” and “record-setting” seems passe now.

Here’s a quick look at the data:

As for the year?

Well, the number falls down to an increase of “just” 42%:

What’s even better is that as Q2 data was flowing in, forecasts from companies were rising, driving the estimates for Q3 of 2021 S&P 500 EPS even high.  

They’ve doubled their expected growth rates.  

In early January 2021, they were just 14.5%. Now they stand at 29.4%...and counting.

In Case You Were Wondering…About Investor Sentiment

Is all this excellent news driving stock market support?

Eh, no.

Bullish investors should be frothing at the mouth to get into stocks while draining trillions from their collective bank accounts, right?

Thank again:

The snapshot above is from last week.

Its suggests nearly 80% of the investor audience is none too thrilled with the idea of owning a piece of the future in equities.

The consistency of that fear for most of the summer speaks volumes, even as we’ve been chopping along at just 3-4% below all-time highs.  

I’ve never seen this type of embedded fear and investor behaviour before when the markets are so clearly thriving.

And the longer running once-a-week AAII data supports the same fear-driven themes:

Hmmm…days off record highs in the summer haze and 67% of the audience does not like stocks.

Imagine how they’ll react when the media monsters start to return from their summer holidays…