Retail investors and the financial press only recently started to worry about bear markets after stocks have already experienced a substantial decline.
In January 2018, the news headlines got so ridiculous some claimed stocks could never fall. The retail money follows the sentiment, going all in when stocks near their peak and selling near the bottom.
You want to avoid this recipe for underperformance by always staying grounded in your analysis and allocations.
That does NOT mean you should always fade retail investors and the media. They will only be wrong at extreme moments.
The problem for retail investors is they can be right most of the time, but still underperform because of poor timing at inflection points...
Source:goldtelegraph.com