Bullish Or Bearish...Up or Down...What Do I Think?

I am frighteningly optimistic at the moment. I am very long in all my funds. I am too underinvested in stocks in hindsight and am looking to add a few stocks to my portfolios, but it feels chasey up here and will wait for great setups.

I have spent some quality time with one of my best pals and mentors Brad Feld the last few days and we briefly discussed where we thought we were in the cycle. I quickly chimed in that it felt that we were closer to the end than the beginning. Brad argued that we were still in the middle of the meaty part. Brad is no wreckless bull. He’s been there and done that. That moved me to defcon 3 on optimism.

More on the bullish front…

Bitcoin bubbled and crashed. Nobody blinked. This is a classic tweet that captures the misunderstanding of what is really at hand:

I look at The Stocktwits $BCOIN stream and see a beautiful 3 week stream of consciousness from traders and investors that chrocalized it in short form text and links. It’s there to study.

Bitcoin is not dead. The price rise is likely over for a very long time and that’s cool if it is to be a currency and not a ‘security’. I just passed on a Bitcoin exchange and brokerage opportunity, but I did want to invest because the trust revolution has moved beyond gold and silver.

Apple crashed (can’t call it a bubble) and the market moved on. That’s just amazing.

Owners of $TSLA cars talk about them like they do $AAPL hardware products. That’s the beginning of a trend, not the end. This is a cheap money era so this movement is over the hump.

Though I can’t print stuff in 2D that reliably, engineers said screw that and built stuff that allows me to print in 3D.

We will have a $1 trillion company in my lifetime and I want to be a part of it. Even if it’s the last $200 billion. It could be healthcare, data, biotech, hardware, software, energy….but it will show itself or has shown itself.

I am seeing more angel deals than ever with founders that have more domain experience at prices that I like (low). The prices got too high last year and I was passing most of the year. Not so in 2013. We have already closed on six. You can see all of what our firm – Social Leverage – does and thinks on our website

I like seeing LATE stage ‘Convertible Debt’ (committment to the market and large teams), not just the silly early stage convertible debt now being thrown around too easily in Silicon Valley.

I was saying just yesterday for the boom to continue in the angel investing world, INVESTORS need to make money. The pendulum has switched way too far in favor of entrepreneurs and developers and it has been bothering me. It feels like we can as a community self correct this. I believe that the pendulum eases back to the middle with both sides understanding the tensions.

Most importantly for the moment at least, people are just frightened and do not believe in the markets. Take a look at this ‘Chart Art’ from Kimble:

I must always add a word of caution…especially since I am so optimistic at the moment. Cash is still being raised. I am looking to raise cash always. The executives at Nasdaq 100 Companies are also doing so at record levels at 39,000 to 1.

Hope this helps you get a feel for how I am thinking right now. It can change anytime and of course will continue to chronicle it here.