In 2009 I Learned That…

If it’s true that we learn new things with every passing year then the year 2009 was like a crash course in fringe economics, lunatic civics and paranormal market activity all rolled up in one.

I got a little help from my friends on this one, I hope you enjoy the wit and wisdom below.

In 2009 I learned that…

Phil Pearlman (StockTwits): sometimes folks clutch gloom the way toddlers clutch blanky.

Vince Veneziani (The Business Insider): Broadcom founder Henry T. Nicholas had a sex dungeon in his house. What I did not learn is the directions.

TPC (The Pragmatic Capitalist): Wall Streeters are like gold fish – they have very short memories, are practically useless and require a great deal of help from outside resources to survive.

Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture): that human nature never changes.

The Fly (iBankCoin): the NY Mets were invented to punish me.

Lawrence McDonald (Author, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense): $10 trillion will always buy you 4000 DOW points.

Howard Lindzon (Elevator Inspector): the FED is running the best Ponzi scheme EVER.

Cody Willard (Fox Business Network’s Happy Hour): when the Republican/Democrat Regime in power redistributes trillions of dollars from the renters and savers to the bankers, most bank stocks will go up.  A lot.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael (Financial Times): no one is better at navel gazing than the media.

Noah Rosenblatt (UrbanDigs): the fed can really buy their way out of a depression.

Downtown Josh Brown (The Reformed Broker): the ink was all red, most Americans were blue, but stocks went bananas, bonds and commodities too!

Joe Donahue (Upside Trader): pundits and analysts continue to validate the theory that a broken clock is right twice a day and you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Eric Jackson (Ironfire Capital): it’s always darkest before the Fed jumps in with backstops for any large institution that moves.

Michael Dawson (Trend Rida): HOT doesn’t just apply to the sights on the beaches in Brazil – everything there from broadband to beer is smoking.

Arthur Cutten (Jesse’s Cafe Americain): on certain occasions people, who ordinarily would barely lift a finger in an unselfish or idealistic act, will engage in the greatest effort to cast themselves and their children off a precipice for a profane delusion, in an act of petty willfulness, for a destructive compulsion which they are too proud to relinquish, even to the point of death. This is the madness of the mob, and in our day, the suicide of the west.

Justin Paterno (Zero Beta): celebrity death is great for the economy.

Heidi Moore (Independent Journalist): truth is always the underdog.

Francine McKenna (Re: The Auditors): there is no need for me to be afraid but every reason to be wary.

Trader Mark (Fund My Mutual Fund): Ben Bernanke can remain irrational far longer than I can remain solvent.

Steve Sears (Barron’s): nausea is the very best buy signal.

Joe Weisenthal (The Business Insider): I end up succumbing to conventional wisdom just like everyone else, see my gloomy thoughts in March.

Jason & Alyx (LOLFed): if you owe ten thousand, the government owns you, but if you owe ten billion, you own the government.

Charles Kirk (The Kirk Report): Livermore is right – it is never your thinking that makes the most amount of money but by sitting tight especially when you are right.

Tom Brakke (Research Puzzle): there’s a right size to everything (trade, project, business, economy, etc.) and that trying to stretch beyond that usually triggers mistakes.

Karen Glassman (Tirschwell & Loewy): Gordon Gekko has the same initials as Greed is Good, Government and Goldman…how ironic.

Trader Alamo (TraderAlamo.tv): any sign of a bearish technical pattern was actually uber-bullish, resulting in new-fangled patterns such as the now popular, “I shot my ear off”, paying homage to Van Gogh while simultaneously mocking perpetual buyers of FAZ.

StockJockey (1440 Wall Street): trend followers eventually take it in the rear.

Leigh Drogen (Surfview Capital): there is a real meaning to “don’t fight the fed”.

Prieur du Plessis (Investment Postcards): there is a lot of truth to the following quote from The Economist (1986): “The best investors are like socialites. They always know where the next party is going to be held. They arrive early and make sure that they depart well before the end, leaving the mob to swill the last tasteless dregs.”

Ben Shoval (Hedge Fund Comedian): doing God’s work pays better than I thought…also, too much credit is the problem… and the solution.

Stuart Varney (Fox Business Network): it is possible to borrow a trillion dollars, print a trillion dollars and nationalize a big chunk of the American economy, and still see the biggest nine month stock market rally in three generations!

OneTwo (1-2 Knockout): no one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of government.

Adam Warner (Daily Options Report): I shouldn’t leave my cell phone and my golf clubs lying around near my car.

Damien Hoffman (Wall St Cheat Sheet): “Yes We Can” was truly a slogan to reignite the charge for Wall Street banks who needed taxpayers as a silver lining for a global scam-gone-wild.

Jay (Market Folly): people who didn’t make money in the massive rally this year are hurting almost as bad as people who lost a ton of money in 2008.

Patty Edwards (CNBC Fast Money): money covers a multitude of sins, usually those of politicians and bureaucrats.

Tadas Viskanta (Abnormal Returns):  Too big to fail = Too big to exist…also, it’s Goldman’s world, we are just living in it.

Paul Harper (My Emerging Voice):  shorts in a bull market when succesful can be very profitable, also that my emerging markets telecoms stance has been a real winner.

Karl Denninger (Maket-Ticker): governments will sanction lying and even outright fraud to an
unprecedented degree to avoid telling the truth.

David Merkel (Aleph Blog): neoclassical economics does not have the capacity to adapt to reality….also, junk bond investors could go from depression to mania in six months.

Adrienne Gonzalez (Jr Deputy Accountant): if you put MS Paint hearts on pictures of Fedheads you can get them to pass your posts around the Bank…but shhhhh 😉

Michael Panzner (Financial Armageddon): only three words matter when it comes to investing in today’s markets: ignorance is bliss.

CC (Charts and Coffee): the fear (or hope) of a one day market collapse is an erroneous psychological bias that many traders harness to their detriment.

The Anal_yst (The Atlantic): despite 10% (or 18%) unemployment, it totally makes sense that retail and consumer discretionary stocks are back up to 2007 levels.

Scott Bell (GDP Wealth): I am so happy to not be a Carnival Barker on a finance network.

Wade Slome (Sidoxia Capital): $14 trillion in debt, 10% unemployment, and approval of socialized healthcare can lead to an +80% move in the NASDAQ Composite over a 10 month period….also Tiger Woods prefers eating out at the buffet rather than at home, even though it’s cheaper to eat at home and having Swedish meatballs every night ain’t so bad.

Greg Battle (Leftover Takeout): dumb persistence trumps lazy genius more often than not…also,  Danny Duberstein is good at two things.

Feel free to vote for your faves below.

Thanks everyone!  Happy New Year!