Should we take the Dow's overoptimism seriously?

Monkeys like flashes from the past. The little forms of nostalgia, the throwback of hitherto advice delivered as a way of fishing from the past, from the recycle can of our desktops, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and restoring it for more than it's worth.

Everyone knows we should be careful to those who supply it. In this case, I'd like to point the glaring over optimism in the forum and the possible pitfalls to listening to it – a meta-view of Wall Street Oasis if might allow me to say so.

To many, the market will rebound, at variance from the occupation in finance you're in, no matter how deleterious the after effect of its long hours on the mind, the toll it takes on your body, be it IB, Trading, or PE.

In waiting the trough of the bust years will mean, like waiting for the kingdom of heaven to come, the boom years will bring its deliverance and just rewards will be reaped by those who pray for it.

Like Herbert Hoover said in 1929 (after the crash of course): 'Prosperity is around the corner'. Let me tell you now monkeys, just as over in the trading floors of the aged, jaded, and cynical at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the open-outcry pits, or even elsewhere, outside, are worlds which have had as massive layoffs as in IB, and who would argue the world isn't coming back anyone soon? Why, well it helps sticking outside of the group think bubble -- because they're more realistic.

Again, the idea of prosperity around the corner, and its main profiteer, PE, not wanting to walk out without their just reward is ludicrous. This idea, this story of growth, that it flows in a canal-straight course should never come to interest anyone who understands prosperity is never, ever, just about to turn a corner – even if you are buying premium (in options theory, taking a punt, that is essentially what PE does and group-thinkers are saying). Because, if both Bloomberg and CNBC can claim in 2009, '10, '11', and yes now even in 2012, to 2013, and 2014, will be the years of the successive creation of wealth, they might hit it on the head one year, but the fact remains that their job is to be confident and some read into this stuff a bit too often.

Take an obvious example: the stories of growth of PE in this forum, the fantastic successes of PE in the past ten years, its narrative of its great lifestyle, returns, and the high pay...are that, stories. Stories of growth have triumphed, and not for the first time, to become the dogma of bubbles of the same blast from the past that have nourished recessions for years, decades, centuries, millennia, gone by.

I mean, there are San Francisco-based bankers on the forum who refuse to say it too. Perhaps it's a East Coast thing. Bankers on the West Coast are optimistic by nature. As someone once said to me: live in New York City once but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California but stay because you makes you soft. So while we know the East Coast is doing badly. What about PE firms?

But, despite the fact the majority of PE firms are making below-average returns, that many are going past their expiration date with years of unenviable lacklustre results, and successive reporting of mediocre investments of the majority of mid-cap firms. Likewise, we could say while this ship may not be blowing up like the S.S. Doneau or filling in with water like the the Titanic, it is floating ever so slightly above the market's surface and only just. Because, there's only one inalienable truth about market expectations: prices rise, politicians philander, and markets die but resurrection is for Lazarus gentleman and not for the Dow. Even if it comes back to an all-time high it will not relieve us of the period's volatility, optimism, and other psychophysiology benefits -- it will, in sum, never come back with all of its grandeur.

Just as the hedge fund business has fallen to its knees, PE, the epitome of bullishness in our imperial American financial hub of New York, needs to be rocked off its wooden horse. Stagnation is the most and the very least we can expect for another few years. If everyone on this forum are buying into stories of growth and spreading it around, then they're doing the work of ten yeoman's service in preaching the doctrines and practices of nothing more of modern Greek capitalism, and not the sense of realism that can be inoculated into your if you take financial history seriously.