When I read many of the comments to columns I see posted, the pervasive bearishness is quite striking, whether it is negative about the economy, the market, or just simply overall negative. This applies whether the columns themselves are positive or negative, or whether the site is overall positively or negatively bent. In my experience, it seems to be that the public (or at least those within the public that post comments) leans bearish much of the time. The only time you see them being bullish is about metals, and the only reason they are bullish metals, is because they think everything else around them is bearish and negative. Why is that? As one who has always attempted to view markets from an unbiased perspective to determine what the next bigger move will be, it almost seems as though I am fighting an uphill battle whenever I determine we should be looking up in the stock market or down in the metals market. Whenever I write a bearish market column, I see a large number of posts in support of my perspective. But when I write a bullish market column, I am derided and demeaned by posts of how I don't know what I am talking about since the market is clearly going to crash. Let's face it folks; bearishness sells. Bearishness seems to be what the public wants to see in print. Have you ever wondered why? Focusing on the negative Is there an old-timer to whom you have spoken lately who has not mentioned how things were "better back in the day?" If one were to seriously consider history, on just about every metric, the world is in far better shape than almost any time in history. In fact, one of my favorite rides at Walt Disney World in Florida is the Carousel of Progress, and it was rumored to be Walt's favorite as well. That ride presents how we have technologically progressed through the 20th century, and one cannot deny those significant progressions from a period of time before electricity. While we are very concerned about war and terrorism today, are we any worse than World War I, World War II, our own Civil War, etc.? We gripe about wages, poverty, and the value of the dollar, but poverty is at historic lows, and the poor have things today that rich people couldn't dream about 100 years ago. As much as we complain about our current health-care system, do you recognize the leaps and bounds we've taken in the past 100 years in medicine/health/science? Are we now living longer or shorter lives than we were 100 years ago? From my perspective, we have clearly been on a long term path of progression. While we certainly have experienced periods of regressions, overall, we seem to have historically been on a positive path. Yet, most seem to only focus upon the negative regressions. Why? Roy F. Baumeister, a professor of social psychology at Florida State University, captured the idea in the title of a journal article he co-authored in 2001, "Bad Is Stronger Than Good," which appeared in The Review of General Psychology. In that article, he explained that those who are "more attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats and, consequently, would have increased the probability of passing along their genes ... Survival requires urgent attention to possible bad outcomes but less urgent with regard to good ones." This seems to cause man to become hyper-focused on the negative, which is driven by his innate desire to survive. Furthermore, when we consider that fear is the strongest emotion generated by our brain stem, we can develop a negativity loop that drives us to continually focus upon the negative by our strongest natural tendencies. Now, we have a better understanding as to why fear or bearishness sells. Our innate tendencies seem to drive us in that direction, despite all the empirical data to the contrary. While our innate tendencies seem to have been pre-programmed within our brain stems to assist man to survive in a life and death struggle, I am not sure such hyper-focused tendencies help us in all aspects of our current lives in which we clearly allow them to reign. The herd mentality Man also has a natural tendency for herding. And just as in our financial markets, such tendencies for focusing upon the negative, as well as herding, do not always serve an investor in a manner which is positive for their investment account. Rather, there are times when an investor has to fight their natural tendencies to avoid adverse effects upon their investment account. I have spoken about this general perspective a bit more in this recent column. It is for this reason that we recognize that contrarian thinking is much preferred to "group think" when dealing with financial markets. Consider how many of you have maintained a bearish bias of the stock market since 2009? We have heard all the same reasons that feed our natural bearish tendencies. But one has to question if the fundamentals, which has many currently bearish, will foretell a long-term top in our market so that the majority of the market may prepare for the "crash." Well, has the market ever telegraphed such a market decline? Think about it. Is it more fashionable to be bearish today than bullish? The Fed is taking away easy money. The economy is supposedly not doing so well. GDP has supposedly been anemic. Commodities have been in free fall. Real unemployment is still quite high. Government debt is increasing at an alarming rate. Insurance costs are rising by double-digit percentages annually. High-yield debt has been crashing. Is there any good news out there, or do we have a solid wall of worry being built? Be a contrarian I would like to remind you of what was said by Professor Hernan Cortes Douglas, former Luksic Scholar at Harvard University, former Deputy Research Administrator at the World Bank, and former Senior Economist at the IMF,regarding those engaged in "fundamental" analysis for predictive purposes: “The historical data say that they cannot succeed; financial markets never collapse when things look bad. In fact, quite the contrary is true. Before contractions begin, macroeconomic flows always look fine. That is why the vast majority of economists always proclaim the economy to be in excellent health just before it swoons. Despite these failures, indeed despite repeating almost precisely those failures, economists have continued to pore over the same macroeconomic fundamentals for clues to the future. If the conventional macroeconomic approach is useless even in retrospect, if it cannot explain or understand an outcome when we know what it is, has it a prayer of doing so when the goal is assessing the future?” So, do we sound like we have struck the top of our long-term bull market? Or are our natural tendencies simply driving us on the "bear bus?" While we may certainly still see another pullback down to the 1800s in the stock market, does the news flow suggest that we are topping in a long-term bull market, or does the news flow still seem too bearish to be at a major top? I want to take this opportunity to wish you and your families a very happy and healthy new year. May the new year bring you and your families health, prosperity and growth, and may we continually strive together to uncover the truths within our financial markets so we can maintain on the correct side of the trend. More from MarketWatch