Party Like It’s 1996?!?

Time for an informal poll again. Raise your hand if you keep track of VIX SMAs going back more than 20 days. What about SMAs going back 1000 days? You may think I’m crazy (sometimes I like to pretend to be crazy just to be a little more provocative, so consider the possibility that I’ve merely intentionally unhinged my brain for awhile,) but if you put any credence in the idea of VIX macro cycles and think it is possible for VIX cycles to last 2-4 years, why not look at the VIX’s long-term moving averages?

When thinking about the current investment environment and the year it most closely resembles, one year I do not recall any reference to is 1996. Look at the chart below and consider that 1996 was not a bad time to initiate an aggressive buy and hold strategy. Do you remember what Yahoo looked like in 1996? No, not the stock (which opened at a split-adjusted 1.05 in April and could be had for 0.64 in July), but the 1996 Yahoo web site.

Continuing the wayback machine theme, coming tomorrow: what I was buying in 1997 and why I was buying it.