Welcome to 1974!!!

Sure there were no CSI shows on TV, but we had Mannix!  Who could forget Joe Mannix, before the faky self-depricating Rockford Files or the more homo-erotic Magnum, chasing the bad guys with the help of his trusty Girl Friday, Gale.  That's when men were men: they smoked and drank and wore ties.  I'll take Mannix.

We also had President Gerry Ford (above) as the place-keeper chief executive who was chosen more for his willingness to pardon Nixon and his lying cronies than for anything else, such as the ignoble Whip Inflation Now buttons he and his cabinet wore.  But his wife Betty created a world famous drug rehab institute to cure herself of her various addictions, so his presidency was not for naught.  She also gave the clarion call for the new technology of mammogram screening in the 70's when she developed breast cancer.

Well, the stock market looks a lot like 1974 with crashes and terrorism and oil fluctuations.  Sure, the details are always a bit different, but the great economist Kondratieff would agree that the market rhymes from generation to generation.  Thirty-four years ago we had a presidential crisis and the dollar was devalued to almost nothing... sound familiar?

We hit bottom on the SPX and DJIA in October before making a run up to the 50-day moving average (red line) that failed a couple times (ala Eric) before breaking through.  Eventually the first rally above the 50-day failed and lower lows were reached, but the bottoming process was established.  Is this more like 1974 or will we see the more dolorous drop that we experienced from 1929 to 1933?  I vote 1974.

Happy Days was a brand new show and Archie Bunker was still going strong.  Nixon's drug-addled brain was back in San Clemente pondering his broken legacy of deciet and debacle, much like our current President will soon be doing.  The wonderful rhymes of history.

Today we see a similar stock market to 34 years ago, with a horrendous drop and now some decent base building as we crawl out of our hovels to realize that there are no muhroom clouds afterall-- we may actually survive!  In case you haven't noticed, the SPX is approaching it's 50-day moving average.  Sure, we are not out of the woods yet, but we ahve to accept the good news that people are buying stocks.

Yes, this may fail, and we may even see lower lows in the coming year, but the optimist says that we will again survive... just like we did in 1974.