If you don't know the difference ...

... you are in trouble! - Howard Marx

In the late '60s and early '70s if you didn't own the Nifty-Fifty, there was something indescribably wrong with your portfolio - or you.
The Nifty 50 stocks got their notoriety in the bull markets of the 1960s and early 1970s. They became known as "one-decision" stocks because investors were told by individuals such as University of Pennsylvania professor Jeremy Siegel that "they could buy and hold them forever."

In case anyone is interested how the "Nifty 50" fared during the bear markets of 1973-1974;

Blue Chip Performance: 1973-1974

• Du Pont -58.4%

• Eastman Kodak -62.1%

• Exxon -46.9%

• Ford Motor -64.8%

• General Electric -60.5%

• General Motors -71.2%

• Goodyear -63.0%

• IBM -58.8%

• McDonalds -72.4%

• Mobil -59.8%

• Motorola -54.3%

• PepsiCo -67.0%

• Philip Morris -50.3%

• Polaroid -90.2%

• Sears -66.2%

• Sony -80.9%

• Westinghouse -83.1%

Just to recap;

... as well as;

• U.S. Market Capitalization / U.S. GDP exceeded 2.75 while the Historic Norm (not the low) remains 0.78 - i.e. ~70% below current levels(!!)

www.hussmanfunds.com...omment/mc210315p.png

• U.S. Margin Debt / U.S. GDP has surpassed all previous records (by a very wide margin!), not only by nominal measures but also in relative terms!

www.hussmanfunds.com...omment/mc210315r.png

Comment:

• "The reason why the stock market must necessarily remain the same is that speculators don’t change; they can’t. Shrewd business men who wouldn’t sell absurdly overpriced securities would not buy, two years later, underpriced stocks and bonds. The same blindness to actual values was there, only that while the heavy black bandage was greed in the bull market, it was fear in the bear market. Reckless fools lost first because they deserved to lose, and careful wise men lost later because a world-wide earthquake doesn’t ask for personal references. Everybody who looked for easy money in 1928 or 1929 lost both dreams and cash in 1929 or 1930. In 1931 nobody was spared."– Edwin LeFevre, Vanished Billions

Comment:

NYSE COMPOSITE INDEX;