Remember a year ago when the so-called pundits were screaming at you for missing the train on those delicious buys in the equity markets?

“BUY! BUY!” they hollered from rooftops on Wall Street and Bay Street.

Prematurely calling a bottom after the market tanked post-Sept. 11, the tall foreheads were desperately pounding the table on the stock market and scolding all us idiots for being caught napping as the train left the station.

Barron’s newspaper also boarded the happy train, shouting on its front page: TIME TO BUY!

Well, here we are a year later, gang, and, if you bought into the old buy-and-hold mantra then, you’re back at the Heritage Park train station, a bit dazed and confused from the merry-go-round ride.

Hey, maybe you should be screaming at these so-called pundits: BYE-BYE!

About the only ones who made any money buying the broad market indices in the past year are the swing traders.

The TSX has come back to roost in the 6500 range, precisely where it was a year ago. It did bounce as high as 8000 during the past year.

The Dow 30 is hovering near the 8235 level it hit on Sept. 21, the post-Sept. 11 bottom for U.S. markets, after trading as high as 10600.

The Nasdaq, which hit 1423 on Sept. 21, 2001, is almost 10 per cent off in the 1300 range, but traded up to 2050 in the past year.

Now, as stocks continue to get hammered, you can expect the hypesters to turn up the heat in a desperate bid to
convince investors the worst is behind us, but there doesn’t seem to be a single compelling reason to leap into this market unless you’re on the defensive side of the ball, playing the energy and precious metals sectors that have shone over the past year.

Even when we made it through the Sept. 11 anniversary without any terrorist attacks, the market still couldn’t drag investors off the sidelines, with the markets tumbling on Sept. 12 and 13.

This is not a good sign.

If investors were looking for ‘Uncle Al’ to get them into a party mood in his much-ballyhooed address to Congress on CNBC, Alan Greenspan left them rather disappointed.

The beleaguered U.S. Federal Reserve chairman showed all the cheer of a man at a funeral, looked every bit as tired and weathered and beaten as the market itself and crankier than a Nortel shareholder.

And the fact that Greenspan, whose aggressive interest rate cuts have failed miserably in injecting life into the equity markets, had precious little to say about the economic outlook is hardly a vote of confidence for investors.

Of course, the market has virtually no chance of mustering a sustained rally as long as the black cloud of a U.S. attack on Iraq hovers ominously over Wall Street.

The Dow 30 is headed for a third straight losing year, which would mark the first time in 61 years that the Dow had a three-year losing streak (1939-41). To avoid a third straight losing year, the blue-chip index would have to rally 21 per cent before the end of the year.

Don’t bet on it.

Based on a sluggish economy, the prospect of more and more profit warnings and the uncertainty weighing on the markets, the only light at the end of the tunnel we can see is a train wreck waiting to happen.

* NO TEARS: For former Nortel Networks CEO John Roth, who sold the last of his shares – 751,245 – in Nortel at $1.55 on Aug. 1,severing his last connection to the company he helped set up for the most devastating stock crash in Canadian history.

You already knew about Roth’s shortcomings as CEO of Nortel. With Roth at the helm, Nortel’s business began to unravel with the share price now down 99 per cent from its all-time high of $124.50.

Now we know the old skipper could use a crash course in trading.

Just three weeks after Roth unloaded his last batch of shares at $1.55, Nortel spiked up to $2.

Of course, shareholders burned by Nortel’s demise won’t be shedding any tears for Roth, who exercised stock options worth $123.5 million in 2000 when the stock was near its peak.

“Looks like he’s voting with his feet,” quipped one fund manager, pleading anonymity.

* SAGE WORDS: “Buy and hold is a fraud, a concept perpetrated by mutual fund managers and brokers.”

– Paul Desmond, president of Lowry’s Report on technical analysis.



HOT ALBERTA STOCK: Genesis Land Development
GDC-TSX $2.72
Up $1.27 (+86.2%) on 3,049,200 shares (for week ending Sept. 13).
Takeover deals are often worth a premium of 25-50 per cent, but this was the champagne of takeovers with Genesis shareholders copping a near double when closely held Mattamy Development of Oakville, Ont., agreed to buy the Calgary-based land development company for $113.6 million. After trading an average of 18,000 shares per day over the past three months, Genesis racked up volume of 3 million shares in two days after the blockbuster deal.



COLD ALBERTA STOCK: ZI Corp.
ZI-TSX $3.75
Down $2.40 (-39.2%) on 379,800 shares (for week ending Sept. 13).
After a steady but gradual decline from $11 at the start of the year, Zi shares finally fell off a cliff. The Calgary-based software company recently announced that a jury in a patent-infringement court case found Zi liable for $9 million US in damages to Tegic Communications, a unit of AOL Time Warner. Zi has said it will appeal the ruling.