Thursday, March 01, 2007
"Hyperactive 3rd Graders Playing Musical Chairs"
That was how Sam Stovall of S&P described the last few days in the stock market and it very succintly sums up the action. The government of China engineered a domestic stock market decline to quell rampant overspeculation and the contagion then spread around the globe within hours. The Chinese market, miniscule in size compared to the rest of the world's markets, has had an out-of-proportion reaction and that's certainly not an adult response to what is clearly a rational pricking of a nascent bubble and not the end of the great Chinese growth engine. Yet, the Chicken Littles on Wall Street (and even more so in Europe where they should really know better) are running around, crying that the sky is falling.
Meanwhile, nothing has changed in the economy. In fact, the lagging economic reports are just beginning to throw cold water on the idea the bond market has been having about there being a recession and for a need for the Federal Reserve to cut rates later in the year. It's true that bonds are up this week, but that was mostly due to Chicken Littles fleeing the stock market and buying bonds as a "safe haven." When the reality of a very strong economy -- including an inflation rate that's still above the Fed's target range -- finally sinks in, bonds will fall like the sky the Chicken Littles are so afraid of.
Thursday's market opened with a retest of Tuesday's lows and lower lows were put in for most of them. But, the buyers showed up and pushed the market back up the hill so that, by the close, most of the losses had been recouped. All this gave the adults in the market a grand buying opportunity, of course.
Despite the bounce, the "China Syndome" still has the potential to drag stocks down near term. But, that is likely to just give investors additional buying opportunities in a market which has not given many opportunities in the last nine months.
http://marketclues.blogspot.com/