I'd love to be warned before we go into a recession, so I could adjust my portfolio. But the odds of my figuring it out are nil. Some people wait for these bells to go off, to signal the end of a recession or the beginning of an exciting new bull market. The trouble is the bells never go off. Remember, things are never clear until it's too late.

[In the 1981-82 recession], at the moment of greatest pessimism, when eight out of ten investors would have sworn we were heading into the 1930's, the stock market rebounded with a vengeance, and suddenly all was right with the world

                                  - Peter Lynch (One Up On Wall Street, p.75)