Maybe it s or the fear or looking foolish, but we instinctively tend to shy away from markets trading at or near their all-time-highs.

First, we re conditioned to want a bargain. If we re bullish on NTT DoCoMo trading at $16.75, for some reason we refuse to pay anything more than $16.40, and when it rallies further, we stubbornly sit on our hands and promise to add shares only if the price corrects back to where we originally spotted it. We re a nation of hagglers: Nobody wants to pay full price.

That approach contradicts the very reason that leads us to put money to work in the first place. If you re bullish on XYZ, buy XYZ and buy it at the market price. In a bull move, waiting to buy a dip when establishing an initial position often means missing out completely, as the security rises and never looks back.

We are even more reluctant to buy into markets at all-time-highs because, in addition to possibly losing money, there s massive ego risk. Who wants to be known as having been foolish enough to have bought the all-time high for anything? We convince ourselves the real move has already been made.

How Far Off the Peak?

	High	Date of High	Current	Retracement (%)
Pork bellies	144.00	Aug 25, 2010	144.00	0.0
Gold	1257.20	June 18, 2010	1239.90	-1.4
Feeder cattle	119.58	Oct 13, 2005	116.40	-2.7
Ten-year note	130.09	Dec 18, 2008	125.92	-3.2
Swiss franc	1.01	March 17, 2008	0.97	-4.1
Live cattle	104.00	July 2, 2008	98.67	-5.1
Jap. yen	1.25	April 18, 1995	1.18	-5.5
Lean hogs	91.32	Aug 19, 1982	77.01	-15.6
Copper	407.75	July 2, 2008	321.10	-21.3
Cotton	116.88	April 24, 1995	88.15	-24.6
S&P 500	1576.20	Oct 9, 2007	1054.60	-33.1
Br. pound	2.45	April 23, 1980	1.54	-36.8
Soybeans	16.58	July 3, 2008	10.00	-39.7
Corn	7.54	June 27, 2008	4.05	-46.4
RBOB gasoline	357.10	July 3, 2008	186.39	-47.8
Cocoa	5368.00	July 18, 1977	2719.00	-49.3
Wheat	12.80	Feb 27, 2008	6.478	-49.4
Crude oil	145.29	July 3, 2008	72.52	-50.1
Coffee	335.63	April 14, 1997	164.10	-51.1
Heating oil	410.60	July 3, 2008	197.06	-52.0
Rice	24.46	April 23, 2008	11.26	-54.0
Silver	41.50	Jan 21, 2008	19.03	-54.2
Lumber	492.40	March 8, 1993	210.60	-57.2
NASDAQ 100	4804.00	March 24, 2000	1789.75	-62.7
Sugar #11	65.20	Nov 20, 1974	20.03	-69.3
Natural gas	15.378	Dec 13, 2005	3.87	-74.8

Source: Bloomberg

Yet consider how many all-time-highs gold has hit since eclipsing it s long held $800 level back in early 2008. Or the fact that, although the Securities and Exchange Commission bizarrely chose to fine a ConAgra trader for his attempt to buy the first all-time-high of $100-a-barrel crude oil in 2008, prices ultimately jumped 48% just six months later. That s exactly the point: $100 ended up being a high, not the high.

Regular readers know we never characterize markets as high or low," but as strong or weak." And in trending markets, strong securities like the yen or bonds tend to stay strong, or at least stronger than alternatives. On a price basis alone, an all-time-high is a reason to follow a market, not flee it.

Given the wide variety of investment products now available, it makes sense to cast a wide net when looking for opportunity, especially given the recent weakness in equities.

Among those markets closest to their all-time highs include gold (1.4% below) and bonds (3.2% below), both which have received extensive media coverage along with the Swiss franc (4.1% below) and livestock, where pork belly prices currently rest at an historic high and cattle (2.7% below) rest only slightly under the peaks notched earlier this decade.

At the time of writing, Hoenig s fund owned shares of securities discussed.