“Tom” said something that reinforced my belief that a bottom to this bear market is near. And it was music to a contrarian’s ear. What he said was: “The tone of our phone calls has completely changed. The emotion in the calls we get isn’t greed anymore, it is fear.”

Who is Tom? He works on a sales team that sells financial products, and he talks to investors all day long.

The old saying that the market likes to climb a wall of worry is going to come into play over the coming months. If the amount of fear in the market is any indication, that wall has reached new heights and the climb could be long and steady.

Because the climb will be long and steady, there is no need to dive head first into the market right now, but it is certainly time to start dipping your toe back in the water and scooping up extremely undervalued stocks. Two of my favorites are Chattem (CHTT) and AT&T (T). Both should do extremely well over the next year, regardless of what the rest of the market is doing. Even better, when the market starts going up, they will climb that wall along with it.

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