On Monday 3 October, just two months ago, I noted that the best time to buy was when there was pain all around.
The FT Index was then 6893.81, having fallen 8.1% from 7501.06 in the three weeks beforehand.
Do your homework and get buying if you want to catch the bargains was the sentiment of my article.
Last night the FT Index closed at 7577.47, up almost 10% in the intervening period.
The question I would now ask myself with brand new cash would I pile into the market at the current levels?
My answer is an immediate no way.
Apart from the ever-rising cost of living being skewered by higher fuel tarriffs, then falling house values, and even a culling of turkeys – all seem to be against a peaceful existence.
But that is not all.
It is bad enough seeing so many companies announcing profit cutbacks.
Apparently, we now have to cope with a new Covid variant over the next few months.
I do not like the aggregating of strikes that now abound, postmen, hospitals, trains, buses, nurses, ambulances, the list goes on.
And then we have the ‘Just Stop Oil’ crowd, causing motorway and vehicular hazards.
On top of that there is an almost invisible attempt to stop the ever-growing tide of immigrants floating on to our shores and into our hotels.
In my senior years I still find it very difficult to get my head around ‘woke’ status etc, furthermore we seem to have no real disciplinary controls stopping knife-crime, and protestors of all shapes and sizes.
Do we all need a sharp shock jolt into our systems?
Then we have scamsters by the dozens conning their way through private lives and bank accounts, with ineffective judicial pressures.
In addition, there are crypto thieves and defrauders looting away with gay abandon, aided and abetted, it would seem, by the international banking system when they are not letting global money launderers do their business.
Has the whole system gone to pot?
A ‘blanket-buy’
So, would I ‘blanket-buy’ the market – my immediate answer would be a strong negative.
What goes up three times generally comes back twice.
So perhaps a seasonal easing to around the FTSE 7150 level could well be on the cards, taking us into the New Year.
Those comments apply strictly to the ‘short-term’, while my hopes for UK 2023 are based upon a ‘recovery of commercial senses’.