I must have exercised a lot more restraint here over the last couple years in conveying my personal opinions in reference to the extent of correction than I realized. Otherwise, some of you wouldn’t be interpreting my recent exit from the closet as jumping on a bandwagon. I always thought my opinions about the long term projections were pretty obvious. Because of where we peaked “return to trend” has always meant a correction of at least 50%, otherwise it isn’t really a correction.
The more I think about it the more I now realize my lapse in restraint was counterproductive to what I’ve been trying to do on this blog.
I confess to attempting to influence the way people see things, but I prefer to think that my usual mode of persuasion has been oriented to providing the reasoning I’ve been using to get to my conclusions rather than to ask people to trust the opinion itself.
I am somewhat distressed at seeing a couple people comment about changing their opinions (apparently) based more on me stating my conclusion than on the reasoning I used to get there. That was never my intent. This is particularly problematic for me because my past track record for projecting timing and extent of these trends has been pretty poor.
I guess what I’m trying to say is if people share my point of view because my reasoning resonates with them then I’m good; but if they’re changing their opinions just because I came out and put a number on my opinion then I can’t feel too good about that.
