Submitted by Adam Taggart via Peak Prosperity blog [5],
Everyone knows the odds of winning in a casino are worse than 50% [6] (often much worse depending on the game played). So who wouldn't rush to a casino where, instead, the odds were overwhelmingly in the gambler's favor?
That's the promise of today's stock market, which has been experiencing an aberrantly high percentage of up days all year. Toss your money into the market and on any given day, you're much likelier to make money than not.
So far, May 2013 has been a gambler's paradise, in which a whopping 76.9% of the trading days for the S&P 500 have been up:
The chart below shows just how far 2013's up day percentage exceeds previous years:
Of course, none of this boondoggle is merited by the underlying fundamentals, which clearly are not good. [7]
But if you're one of the top 10% of Americans that owns 81.2% of all stock market wealth, send a bottle of Bollinger to Ben and his buddies at the Federal Reserve as thanks for keeping the punch bowl so nicely spiked [8]:
(Source) [9]
However, if you're one of the 9% of Americans who actually understands the concepts of "reversion to the mean" and "overshoot", you may want to run -- not walk -- to cash in any chips you may still have on the table. But if you have to keep money in the stock market, be sure to work with a prudent financial adviser [10] that prioritizes risk management and is skeptical of today's easy winnings.
Like all good benders, this is going to end with one heck of a hangover...