At the same time, the earnings season so far has been terrific ... the overall pattern suggests you're getting very strong growth and that we'll probably do better than 15 percent, about double the historical average over the last 60 years. |
I think that fears of inflation are overblown, and that when we consider energy prices have pulled back a bit, there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that inflation has propagated in the economy beyond energy. |
It has had a psychological effect so if we do get this thing settled, it will be a positive for the market. |
One of the signs is that when companies do pre-announce, they haven't been hit as hard this time around, so that suggests the market is starting to look longer term and saying these values are not that unreasonable. |
Sometimes fixing the broken window does create real economic activity. |
Sure, earnings will be slower than they were in the fourth quarter, but margins can't expand forever. But on a risk/reward basis, stocks are still attractive. |
There are risks that inflation could heat up at bit and therefore the risk that the Fed might have to be a bit more vigilant than the market expects is the thing that makes me the most cautious. |
We've gotten more optimistic on earnings on U.S. stocks recently. |
What has happened over the past several months is valuations have come down a lot to where we think stocks are pretty reasonably valued here. |