The Making of a Market Guru: Forbes Presents 25 Years of Ken Fisher

Chapter 12. 1995: List After Bullish List

"Avoiding stocks just because the market isn't cheap is a dumb idea ... The market rises just as often when it is 'not cheap' as when it is. This may seem counterintuitive but it's not. There's a lot of ground between 'not cheap' and 'overpriced.'"

—"Compared With What?" February 13, 1995

"Hot new gurus aren't as good as the old gurus; the old ones got all the wisdom first. If you must have a guru, pick one who already has made mistakes and shown grace in making them. Otherwise, you are most apt to need to pick another one soon."

—"Warren Buffett Versus the Beardstown Ladies," June 5, 1995

The title of Ken's first 1995 column summed up his outlook for the year—"A Year of the Bull" (January 16, 1995). He said, "I expect stocks to shock almost everyone in 1995 with a 20% to 40% rise." And shock most people it did. The Dow, flawed index that it is, crossed both the 4,000 and 5,000 marks in 1995.^[41] The S&P 500 returned 37.6 percent—its best year since 1958.^[42] And as Ken forecast the year before, US stocks led the charge, more than doubling the return on foreign shares.

In "A Year of the Bull," Ken offered up a laundry list of reasons to be bullish about stocks. In fact, he offered up quite a few lists throughout 1995. Appropriately, here's a list of those 1995 lists.

First, Ken's reasons to be bullish in 1995:

• "Too much pessimism. Forecasters are mostly bearish, and so are nine out of ten investors I talk to."

• "The yield curve is nicely upward sloping ...