If False Hope Is Self-Fulfilling IS It False? (If no one is in the forest to hear it?) May 13, 2009March 15, 2017 To get a leg up in life, keep your feet on the ground, your ear to the ground, your nose to the grindstone, your head on your shoulders, your shoulder to the wheel, your eye on the ball, your finger on the pulse, your chin up and your hand in. Being limber helps. (If that sounds familiar, you read it here last Fall. I’m into partial summer reruns. If ’60 Minutes’ can do it, so can I.) FLORIDA IS A MESS Here‘s how to fix it. (Start by fixing the legislature.) WHO’S RIGHT? Yesterday I referred to the bullish stance of my smart friend John Hook, whose model portfolio is already up 32% for the year, and the bearish stance of someone named Niels Jensen, who John Mauldin thinks is very smart (which is good enough for me). Mr. Jensen says: run for your life! Who’s right? The the bulls or the bears? According to Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly letter (and Jeremy can match anyone for smart), both are right. The stimulus here and abroad is so massive, he says, and stock markets are so sensitive to massive stimulus, ‘we are likely to have a remarkable stock rally, far in excess of anything justified by either long-term or short-term economic fundamentals.’ He sees the S&P rising to 1000 or 1100 before the end of the year from today’s 900 (up from 666 in March) – based largely on false hopes. But that’s okay; false hopes are good, too. Whatever works. I’m not doing Jeremy justice. Read the whole letter for yourself. It’s long, so I’ll stop typing and yield the balance of my time.