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

Chapter 20. 2003: Buy on the Cannons

"It is pointless to worry about what others worry about. If you do and base market judgments on those worries you will be wrong more often than right. . . . If others worry about something, you just don't have to because they are doing it for you. You should worry about something else—namely, whatever they're not worried about."

—"Greed Is Good," May 26, 2003

"Our brains weren't set up to do the stock market. We got our information processors from ancestors eons ago. We are only here because they did well then and passed their genes on to us. Financial markets came much later."

—"Volatility, the Good Kind," June 23, 2003

"Buy to the roar of cannons, sell to the sound of trumpets." Sound familiar? Once again, as in 1991, British financier Nathan Rothschild's 1810 quote proved prescient. The bear market reached its ultimate low in October 2002, but as mentioned before stocks didn't move straight up from there. The S&P 500 nearly retested the bear market bottom in March 2003—a low point that coincided almost perfectly with the beginning of the Iraq War. From the day the Iraq invasion began, March 20, 2003, through the end of the year, the S&P 500 skyrocketed nearly 29 percent.^[80]

Ken's optimism grew in 2003 even as the stock market struggled early on. "Where will the market go in 2003? I see only two real possibilities: down a lot or up a lot. Since I don't envision down a lot, I'm bullish . . . I think the S&P 500 could have one of its best years ever." ...