Sheer lunacy......

I love these Wall Street strategists. Lunatics.

Take for instance the venerable salesmen at Merrill Lynch. Today, with the Dow Jones averages at 6-year highs and the S & P 500 index at a 5-year high they tell their clients to increase their exposure to the stock market by 20% from 40% to 50%.

I thought smart intelligent investors were to buy low and sell high.

You see, Wall Street feeds on these asset allocation models. It gives the sales force a reason to call up the customer and tell them that their top "guru" (more sophisticated salesman) has recommended some "commission velocity" in their brokerage account. It is not an asset allocation change, it is an increase in the customers "YTB", aka Yield-To-Broker.

As a NYSE and NASD arbitrator for over a decade one of the scariest things I can imagine being heaped on the investing public is the last day of a brokerage firms "production" month. That is the last day of the cut-off for the brokers paycheck the following month. Walking around a brokerage office on the last day of the production month listening to the brokers weave their tales and stories as to why cusotmers should sell this and buy that is truly a treat.

But only if you love horror shows.