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

Chapter 15. 1998: Rubles, Corrections, and More Bull

"Some readers chastise me for losing my 'value roots.' Guilty as charged. I have simply changed my mind, learning that no investment style is for all times."

—"The Dance of the Elephants," April 6, 1998

"The most basic of all market notions is that the market (The Great Humiliator) is a discounter of all known information. It succeeds by making sure that whatever we all know is either wrong or already priced into securities."

—"News You Can't Use," September7, 1998

Investors began 1998 in a salty mood. Nineteen-ninety-seven was a great year for stocks — the third in a string of over 20-percent years for the S&P 500. With such an impressive stretch under their belts, you'd probably expect investors were feeling pretty good going into 1998. Hardly — 1997 was good, but it was heavily front-end loaded. In a year when the S&P 500 rose over 30 percent, the fourth quarter was only a tad better than flat, rising just 2.9 percent.^[47] And foreign stocks didn't fare nearly as well. Foreign stocks were up only 2.1 percent in 1997, and global markets peaked mid-year, driven lower in the second half by agony in Asia.^[48] The Asian Financial Crisis had folks feeling forlorn about the state of the world. Many saw this as the inevitable top of what had already been a great bull market. From the October 1990 bear market trough through 1997, the S&P 500 was up nearly 300 percent — not the biggest bull in history but well above average.^[49]

Instead of ...