If you’ve been bearish (or “cautious” or “defensive”) in the face of a rally that’s gone on long enough for the financial media to make a story out of the disparity, you may be better off just sticking with it.

I’ve argued in recent days that the recession crowd was definitively wrong, as were bears in general, at least if the economy in question is America’s and the stocks we’re talking about are US equities.

I don’t think that’s an unfair judgement. We haven’t had a recession, after all, we don’t appear to be anywhere close to one, and stocks are perched at or near record highs. Although equities did correct late last summer and into October, it wasn’t an especially terrifying experience even if the rise in long-end Treasury yields was a bit disconcerting. Even if you wanted to make the case that bears were vindicated by the August-October selloff, that’s ancient history now.

But here’s the thing: Trying to atone for missing a rally very often ends badly, where that means as soon as you turn bullish, stocks will almost invariably correct. I’ve been there, and it feels like the universe is conspiring against you. So, better maybe to just stick with it. Which is what JPMorgan’s Marko Kolanovic appears to be doing.

Last week, in a note from his own desk, Marko delivered an overtly foreboding assessment, touching on everything from geopolitics to macro concerns to stretched positioning. If you missed my summary, I recommend you read it at your leisure here. His message was clear enough: Caution’s still warranted.

Marko’s latest missive was met with what’s become an all-too-familiar response which, summarized, goes like this: “One day, he’ll be right.” Bloomberg now publishes a kind of disclaimer dressed up as context whenever they document Kolanovic’s analysis. It’s in their public-facing coverage, but here’s what it looks like on the terminal:

NOTE: Kolanovic’s view on US equities has failed to materialize for two consecutive years. The strategist was bullish throughout most of 2022’s rout and maintained a pessimistic outlook across last year’s big rally, cutting his stock allocation over concerns of an economic downturn.

They may as well write “fair warning.” Or “caveat emptor.” What’s with that? This is a god, by God. Did everybody forget? Who are you mortals to append passive aggressive context to your subpar, subastral coverage?

I’m just joking. But the “NOTE” (it’s there week in, and week out) does feel a little snarky, more than a little gratuitous and, frankly, a bit ungrateful. How about all those interviews Marko generously handed to Joanna Ossinger? Remember those? “People pay attention to Marko Kolanovic,” she declared, in a 2018 profile. He’s the man who makes “market-moving pronouncements.” The rocket scientist who, in addition to his theoretical physics degree, is a “bassoon-playing,” classically-trained musician.

But that was then. That was before the pandemic. That was before, I suspect, Marko might’ve irritated a few people in the liberal-leaning financial media with his COVID analysis, which was cited by The Daily Mail and Fox News, among other places you don’t necessarily want to see yourself quoted if you want to stay in the good graces of the “polite” media. Of course, I quoted Marko’s pandemic coverage, and obsequiously so at times. More than a few readers wish I hadn’t. But let’s face it, folks: Nobody got everything right during the early days of COVID. If you were even half right, half the time, you stood out as a veritable wellspring of certainty during the most tumultuous period for humanity since World War II.

To be clear, I don’t have any definitive “evidence,” to support the contention that Kolanovic’s analysis is being treated ungenerously post-COVID as a result of his well-meaning attempts to map the spread of the pathogen during the early days of the public health emergency, but what I can say is that Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson was just as wrong as Marko last year on the bearish side, if not more so, and Mike everywhere and always got the benefit of the doubt in Bloomberg’s coverage, which habitually referenced Wilson’s top-ranking in 2022’s Institutional Investor survey. At times, that felt like a journalistic apology for a selloff call that stubbornly refused to materialize.

Suffice to say Marko learned, for at the least the second time since becoming a minor celebrity around a decade ago, that fair-weather fans aren’t just a sports phenomenon. Way back in May of 2018, I wrote a piece for Dealbreaker (Remember them? No? That’s ok. Neither does anybody else.) called “You Mortals Weren’t Ready For JPMorgan’s Marko Kolanovic – And Marko Wasn’t Ready For You Mortals.” In it, I alluded to the notion that the right-wing, bear crowd had seemingly become disenchanted with Marko for not predicting enough selloffs. That article rings just as true today as it did then. Here are a couple of excerpts:

You know what? I’m not sure you people are emotionally stable enough to be trusted with Marko Kolanovic notes anymore. And that goes for all of you — bloggers, money managers and journos. It’s almost like all of you thought Marko was “on your side” and so now, instead of reading his notes like you would read any other note, you read them like you might read a letter that was written specifically to you. I think maybe the world wasn’t ready for Marko Kolanovic. And I’d be willing to bet that on some days, Marko feels like he wasn’t ready for the world.

Still pretty apt half a dozen years later, no?

Perhaps sensing their coverage might’ve been pushing the envelope in terms of being unmistakably passive aggressive, Bloomberg published an opinion piece on Tuesday by Jonathan Levin. “Wall Street needs Kolanovic’s pluck even if he’s wrong,” read the headline. “One of the most frustrating features of today’s Wall Street is the surfeit of milquetoast, homogenous research that says a lot without saying very much at all,” Levin wrote, adding that although he’s personally “more optimistic” than Marko, it’s nevertheless “a pleasure to see [Kolanovic] still swinging for the fences even after two strikes.”

That’s more like it, Bloomberg. Now maybe next we can drop the “NOTE”s and the implicit caveat emptors from the rest of the Kolanovic coverage.