Rhody Trader

Last night I watched a movie titled Believe In Me. It’s something along the lines of Hoosiers in terms of basketball coach comes to a new midwestern town (Oklahoma in 1964 in this case), takes over a struggling program, and leads it to great heights. In this case, though, the coach is expecting to be coaching boys, but much to his chagrin ends up with girls. It’s a real-life story of a legendary coach who clearly figured out how to make the gender transition.

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for these coaching movies. Can’t help it. I was a coach. Moreover, specific to this case, I coached girls and women primarily (volleyball, not basketball). Any guy who has ever coached girls will tell you how different it is from coaching boys. It’s a real challenge to make the adjustment. You have to handle individual players differently, and the team as a whole differently. You have to learn how to be tough on them, which goes against much of what is ingrained in us growing up. If you can do it, though, it’s incredibly rewarding.

Anyway, the movie is fantastic. Highly recommended.

Back in August I wrote about how the Commitment of Traders figures suggested that the uptrend probably wasn’t over yet on the basis of the fact that the notorious incorrect small speculators were short. Believe it or not, those Small Specs are even more bearishly biased now than they were 2+ months ago. Check it out.

You can see from the graph how the level of net shorts (Longs – Shorts) is at a low level it has touched a few times the last six months or so. What”s even more interesting to my mind is the 35% bullish (see the highlighted area in the table) indicating that 65% of the positions are short. That’s a big negative bias.

This sort of positioning suggests we may yet see higher highs in stocks.