Every now and then I read something that's really worth passing along. Sadly, in this case, it's a subscriber-only item, but I've got to say it's worth at least taking the trial RealMoney subscription, and occasional pieces like this can almost justify a full year's cost.

This morning, Barry Rithotz, has a brilliant piece called The Fundamentals Stink: Buy Stocks. I don't always agree with Barry, but this column's brilliant, and not just because he talks of "the crowd" in much the same way as I do.

I'll quote briefly:

Your job as investors is to first figure out what the economic reality is, despite the blatherings of the pom-pom crowd. But that's only the first step. The really tricky part is figuring out when the crowd will discover it as well.

That means being proactive about investing. Planning an exit strategy. Continually watching for signs of a major sentiment shift. If you do not have a capital preservation strategy in place, this can be a very expensive game to play.

Barry also suggests a couple of things that I agree with: Employment and inflation -- despite the government statisticians best efforts to spin them otherwise -- actually really suck. The reality beneath the surface, the one that the crowd fails to recognize, is not all that good and justifies long term bearishness. But, so long as the crowd is happy to listen to Jim Cramer, Maria Bartiromo and (heaven help us) their real estate agents to guage the quality of the economy, stocks can still move up and "knowing better" just won't matter.

There's nothing wrong with joining the crowd at times, even when they're running towards the edge of a cliff. What's important is recognizing that they may be missing something and having a plan to deal with it so that you don't risk being swept into the abyss along with everybody else.