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Democracy's finest hour?
These figures are beyond the ken of most of the new class of paycheck-to-paycheck investors. If they can't get it in ten second bites from Dan Rather or that cute stock chick on cable, they don't want to know.
And now the same crowd who brought you the grand tumescence of the tech-stock bubble — and its premature ejaculation — are going to cram their hot sweaty masses into voting booths to pick a president who will carry on the fine work that Bill Clinton didn't do to keep the boom going another couple of months.
Yeah, that's right. I'm writing this before the election. I don't know whether Junior or the stiff will win, and I'm still going to make predictions about next year's market. I can do that because I don't think either one will be able to change the cards he's been dealt.
(I will point out that the folks who know these two losers best have already weighed in with an incredible yawn. In a recent Zogby poll, Gore's own home state of Tennessee is tilting toward Bush, while Governor Jeb, despite Gore's incredible bungling of the Eli·n affair, can't quite seem to deliver Florida to his brother.)
Crystal ball time
Enough sociological (scatological?) rambling. No Tuesday morning quarterbacking is going to tell you what to buy next year. But a little number crunching and some solid chart analysis can yield a reasonable set of odds to govern the decisions you make in the new millennium. So let's get technical.
Since we're trying to take a long view here, let's start with a ten-year monthly NASDAQ chart. Even a blind man can see the incredible bubble that began with the twenty-month, 3,750 point run-up from October '99 to March '00 and ended with the early summer crash back to reality around the 3,000 level.
But did it really end? The long chart reveals an interesting fold concealed in the numbers. A strong oscillating pattern has established itself around the marked upward trend line. Once the extraneous lobes are factored out, the upward trend reappears as strong as ever. Even if we just return to running along the long ten-year centerline, we still retain 66% of our long-term gains: a reiteration of the market's tendency toward retracements in thirds.
 The thumb on the scale
Let's weigh the up- and downside pressures. On the one hand, it looks like Clinton is going to stick whoever follows him with the bill for his "strongest economy ever," much as Reagan stuck Junior's dad with the costs of crushing the evil empire in the '80s.
That means that some cash from the almighty surplus is going have to get spent on a few unaddressed problems, like a military sector in bad need of refurbishing after a couple of small wars in Europe and the Middle East. Look for some additional spending on pills for old folks, a quick patch for Social Security and some half-hearted tax rebates, mostly for guys who can afford the rent on the Lincoln bedroom.
Add on the continuing drag of expensive oil and natural gas on the "real" economy — you know, the tangible stuff that has to get built or shipped or heated — and you get a pretty solemn picture.
Greed always wins
On the other hand, the herd's taste for high-tech riches has been thoroughly whetted by the recent run-up. Not only are they ready for more, they're desperate for it. (Remember all those insane car and house notes? There's no way these overextended millionaire-wannabes can cover those notes with nothing but their anemic biweekly paychecks.) And the herd is notorious for losing sight of long-term problems like inflation, until they get squeezed so hard that the sum total of their ever-shrinking savings won't cover a quart of milk and the gas to go get it.
 So here's my call for next year: No matter who wins the election, we'll see a recovery in the NASDAQ commencing around — well, now, actually. Look for a move up to 5,000 on strong Q1 biotech announcements that will peak around February. Look for a backslide to the long trend's centerline at 3,900 on news of war in the Middle East around Easter, accompanied by long gas lines for about two weeks (at which point, the gas companies will be accused of price gouging and will suddenly find more available supply).
Look for the market to rally for a summer high of around 4,750 and a Q3 back-to-school dip back to the 3,500 mark on weak summer house-building numbers. I expect to close the year up 1,500 from our present low of 3,000.
Currently, I like the heavily underpriced tech sector, although I must say that I prefer profitable second-tier support stocks to the still-bloated figures that Lucent and its ilk are sporting. I think that both real estate and banking are in for some very hard knocks. And I think the damn Yankees are going to take the 2001 World Series. (Come on, they've won one out of every four in this century. You think that's going to change in the next? Gedouttahere!)
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