by Mark Gongloff, Huffington Post
People hate stocks more than at any time in the past quarter century. That could mean it's a decent time to buy them. Wall Street's optimism about the stock market is the lowest it has been since at least 1985, according to a research note on Wednesday by Bank of America's stock strategist Savita Subramanian. The bank measures market agita by tallying how much stock strategists are recommending their clients buy stocks.
In the Bank of America chart at the bottom of this post, you can plainly see that sentiment has absolutely plunged this year. Stock-market strategists are almost always bullish on the stock market, in part because if nobody is buying stocks, then there's not much point in having stock-market strategists, is there? They'd have to go home and sit on their couches. But today, these same strategists are so spooked by the European debt crisis and the fiscal cliff and whatever else -- Obama, or something -- that they are recommending clients sell stocks, more than they did even during the financial crisis or the dot-com bubble bursting or after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Typically, you're going to get some pretty good bargains in stocks when you've got so little competition for them, Subramanian writes. She would be one of the dwindling breed of bullish strategists: "Given the contrarian nature of this indicator, we are encouraged by Wall Street's lack of optimism." Speaking of contrarian indicators, on Tuesday Pimco founder Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest bond mutual fund, declared, "The cult of equity is dying." He warned that carnival barkers promising you annual returns of 6 percent to 7 percent every year in stocks were lying to you, that you should get those people out of your lives immediately. This is the same Bill Gross that predicted interest rates would soar last year (spoiler: they didn't) and then put his money where his mouth was, taking a big hit to his fund's performance and his reputation in the process.
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