"Joy Of Missing Out": One Of The Most Accurate Bulls Just Turned Bearish

Frequently, in fact pretty much every week, we remind out readers that when it comes to research from the big banks - and nobody is bigger or more influential than Goldman - there is the pedestrian, sellside research that is sent out in bulk for popular consumption, media soundbites and just plain old filler (which however enables the bank's best clients to meet with management teams), which is written by Chinese-walled analysts who have zero skin in the game, and which is generally useless as it is based on priced-in fundamental analysis, and then there are sales and trading (S&T) notes written by actual traders who observe every "tactical" move in the market, and which (written far less eloquently than sellside reports) are not only reserved for very limited distribution to some of the best clients, but quite frequently move markets.

Going back to Goldman, an example of this dichotomy is what the bank's chief economist, David Kostin publishes vs what Goldman's FICC and Equity traders distribute occasionally. Consider that late last year, while Kostin was slashing his price targets on the S&P (expecting the S&P to drop to 3,600 in a few months), one of the most respected Goldman traders, Scott Rubner, was telling his clients that stocks would erupt higher not because the fundamentals were getting better - they were obviously not - but because everyone was so beared up and the technicals were so imbalanced so badly, that a squeeze was the only possible outcome. We, of course, told our readers about this at the time, and said to go with the trader  rather than the analyst all the way.

Fast forward to today when with the S&P having recently shot up as high as 4,200, Goldman's Kostin - capitulated, and earlier this week hiked his 3,600 3-month price target to 4,000 (this is the same Kostin who in Nov 2021 said he expects the S&P to close 2023 at 5,100). What about Rubner, who has been correct not just in the past 3 months but has correctly called almost every market inflection point in the past year? Having every right to take a victory lap after he correct for the entire duration of the current meltup, the Goldman trader has once again taken the opposite side of Kostin (the Goldman analyst), and in a note published today, he says that he is moving to the "Joy of Missing Out" or JOMO camp, and he is stepping out of the market for now, while "earning ~5% on 6-month tbills."