The Prospect of Christmas and the New Year Make Social Mood's Positiveness Well Beyond Reason

As every year, the prospect of Christmas and the New Year's celebrations, bring a whole lot of optimism in every category of people and groups you can think of.

And the prospect that the new year will bring in a clean slate, a new beginning, and that the worries of yesterday will not apply tomorrow still fools people.

See for yourself a few reports and articles gathered in the past few days:

Businessworld, yesterday:

The three major concerns that have dominated markets in 2012 appear to be easing, according to a survey of more than 400 global investors conducted by Barclays.

Investors' fears about the eurozone crisis, threats to US growth and the spectre of a Chinese economic slowdown have eased over the past quarter. [...]

Prospects for equities remain positive and positioning light according to the results.

Nothing has changed, everything has deteriorated, specially the mess in the Eurozone and in China...  Yet, on the 11th of December, everybody is happy and all the concerns have eased. I am not making these up!

Bloomberg, yesterday:

German investor confidence jumped more than economists forecast to a seven-month high in December on speculation Europe’s largest economy will gather momentum next year.

The ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim said its index of investor and analyst expectations, which aims to predict economic developments six months in advance, climbed to 6.9 from minus 15.7 in November. Economists predicted a gain to minus 11.5, according to the median of 38 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey.

 Bloomberg, yesterday again:

European stocks rose for a seventh day as German investor confidence jumped more than analysts estimated and investors waited for progress on U.S. budget talks.

Seven days in a row! Wow. And today they seem up so far. Will we get 8 days in a row? Isn't that reaching mania level optimism?

Bloomberg, December the 6th:

Three Economic Bears Seek Goldilocks Economy in U.S.

When it comes to the U.S. economy, the glass may not be half empty after all.
Three prominent bears -- David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates, Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., and David Levy, chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center -- separately see some hopeful signs. These include a housing market that is healing, a more competitive manufacturing industry and technological breakthroughs that could boost productivity.

“More so than at any time in the past three years, I’m doing whatever I can to identify silver linings in the clouds,” Rosenberg said.

The housing market is not healing except in their wishful thinking, I am wondering where they see a more competitive manufacturing industry, specially now that ObamaCare is here, and technological breakthroughs and other evolutionary or revolutionary things could have happened in March 2009 as well.  When perma bears turn bullish, it's usually a very good sign for a top.

Other points I am not going to delve into the details of:

• Lots of bullishness in commodities, including gold and silver which have now topped about 12 to 18 months ago.
• VIX at multi-year lows for quite some time.
• Bubble currencies close to historical highs
• Russell 2000 (the equity equivalent of Junk bonds) at historical high
• Same for most high yield, junk, and muni dept...