Is this the peak of the bull market?

Conventional wisdom in the investment world is that it is hard, if not impossible, to call the really important turns in the stock market. You will struggle to find a professional investor who admits to being any good at market timing, and even more so to find a finance professor who will do anything but deplore those who have the presumption to try. In Winning the Loser’s Game, his brilliant analysis of the investment business, the American consultant Charlie Ellis speaks for the wise when he counsels private investors, ‘Market timing is a sin. Don’t ever try it.’

Warren Buffett agrees. The 24,000 shareholders who made the annual pilgrimage to Omaha, Nebraska two weeks ago to hear the great US investor discourse at his annual meeting, know not to expect him to pronounce on which way the stock market is heading next. Calling the short-term direction of the markets, says Buffett, is a mug’s game.