Super Simon Does it Again

CNBC’s Simon Hobbs called the bottom just before the July rally, and did it again Monday night on the eve of the buying-panic that kicked-off September. And he used the same method that he did last time: he listened to the extreme negativity of the Fast Money “traders” and used them as a contrary indicator. At the 24:35 mark of the video below, Hobbs exclaims:

“Fantastic! I sense another buying opportunity when you’re all bearish. Yes, absolutely. It’s written across the wall.”

Measuring with the TRIN indicator, Simon’s second rally was the most intense in 10 years. Not bad, huh? Here’s an update of my Simon chart (click to enlarge):

Once again, we see that trader-sentiment might be the single most important market indicator. And I will tell you a secret: it doesn’t matter much which traders you take your sentiment-readings from. What percentage of traders are contrary indicators? Probably about 99.9%. It is human nature to run with the herd after all.

And now for the funny part. Everybody on the Fast Money show gets a nickname; so you have “The Negotiator”, “The Liquidator”, “The Wanker” and so on. And since Simon was new to the show, and didn’t have a nickname, I suggested “Super Simon” after his first bottom call almost two months ago. And after his second bottom call, they have started calling him that. At 5:55 into the video below, Guy Adami brings up the subject, and Simon says:

“It’s called the Super Simon Rally on the internet.”

And at 42:14, Brian Kelly mentions the “Super Simon Omen”.

This is amusing to me because I am such a vociferous critic of CNBC. But it just goes to show that nobody can resist a finely-crafted meme.

I’d like to see Hobbs replace Melissa Lee as the permanent host of Fast Money. When did you ever see Lee make a great call? Hobbs is also great because he’s not afraid to get in your face, as he did in July with Michael Pento. Here’s Zero Hedge attacking Simon over that incident. But did Zero Hedge give you the heads-up on the eve of the September surge? Not hardly. It was perpetual Armageddon as usual at Zero Edge while Simon was hitting his grand-slam.

Simon 1, Zero Hedge 0.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Investing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.