“When everybody knows something is so, nobody knows nothin’” —Andy Grove*
As Carl Icahn bailed out on Occidental Petroleum's (OXY) common shares recently, selling spread as traders and algorithms begged on more selling. The research analysts who follow OXY have become even more negative and have adjusted their overwhelming bearishness to the highest level of negativity since at least 2004 (see chart below).
Source: Bloomberg.
There are two psychological extremes in the stock market. First, when a group of stocks has an unusually long streak of success, the success gets extrapolated way