From a Peter Brimelow article:

Stocks may be staggering, but one bullish letter remains calm, basically.

Veteran Michael Murphy's high-tech oriented New World Investor was boldly bullish earlier this year, calling for a V-shaped recovery. ( See Jan. 8 column.)

A few days ago, Murphy exulted:

"Wow, people are now saying it has become accepted wisdom in the markets that the economy is enjoying a V-shaped recovery. What a change from even 90 days ago, let alone last fall. Word is leaking out about something I told you about a couple of weeks ago: April retail sales are very strong. The American consumer is back. I wouldn't call it releveraging, because it isn't being driven by credit card spending. People who panicked and started saving 10% of their income have just trimmed back to 7%, that's all. It's enough to restart retail."

More recently, Murphy even put a positive short-term spin on current market deterioration. He wrote, in his idiosyncratic tech-speak:

"One lurking possibility in the fractal pattern has been that the daily energy releases to the downside with a brief, scary drop to 1150 that re-energizes the weekly chart, and that provides the push to get up to 1250 on May 18 -- now only 10 trading days away. A recovery from today's intraday lows to back over 1190 (which seems highly unlikely at this writing) could be a more dangerous outcome than just heading down to 1150 and getting it over with."

However strange this sounds, New World Investor has been powerfully successful, and not just in the recent past. Over the past 12 months, it's up 107.49% by Hulbert Financial Digest count versus 40.54% for the dividend-reinvested Wilshire 5000 Total Stock Market Index. Over the past three years, the letter is up 10.46% annualized versus negative 4.42% annualized for the total return Wilshire 5000. Over the past five years, the letter was up an annualized 15.11%, versus just 3.47% annualized for the total return Wilshire 5000.

It's only over the very long term that you start to see New World Investor's more checkered history. But to fellow Baby Boomers, Murphy is a heartening demonstration that we're not done yet.

Murphy's calm about the market is in startling contrast to his savage and even conspiratorial view of current events. He writes:

"The best Congress that money can buy is going to pass some sort of financial regulation. One current provision would forbid individuals from buying or selling commodity exchange-traded funds or over the counter financial instruments. The sponsors want to eliminate private speculation in commodity markets -- they claim it is a national security issue. Their argument is that lower commodity prices will bring lower oil prices, buying the country 10 years of breathing room to become energy independent.

"You might say someone is trying to force the SPDR Gold Trust ETF /quotes/comstock/13*!gld/quotes/nls/gld (GLD 118.49, +3.40, +2.95%) and iShares Silver Trust ETF /quotes/comstock/13*!slv/quotes/nls/slv (SLV 17.32, +0.21, +1.23%) to meet massive redemptions by selling gold and silver on the open market, achieving the Federal Reserve's secret policy to keep gold and silver depressed. Or you could say Congress wants to redirect that money into the bond market to support the Treasury auctions. Or you could say that there are some really stupid people in Congress.

"I lean to the latter view, but there might be enough of them to actually pass this provision. The odds are very low that it will survive in the final bill, but I just want to give you a heads up that there is a remote possibility it will pass. If so, we will sell most of our Hyperinflation MegaShift positions until after the precious metals markets are clobbered, and then buy back in when a low is in place."

Elsewhere, he writes: "All this makes it more and more obvious that a high inflation is coming, not deflation, with the possibility of hyperinflation. Gold looks like it is finally ready to climb up to $1,325 even if the U.S. dollar continues to strengthen, as it has been doing during the Greek crisis."

End of quoted part of article.

Hmmm. It would also seem that if individuals were precluded from investing in GLD and SLV, the juniors might see a little more action.

Thoughts?