The Week Ahead

Good morning and welcome to Saturday. It is 55 degrees and sunny with some clouds here in Upstate NY. In this part of the country it will be a good day for outdoor activity. The garden needs to some attention and as we continue to renovate this house, we will work on some landscaping as well.

Investors have been looking at a string of weak economic reports for a few weeks now. The expectation is that this trend will continue probably through June. In addition the second quantitative easing will end in June. Recall that July will signal second quarter corporate reports and that is very hard data. One suspects investors are counting on those reports to help end the present drift.

Everyone is very nervous and anxious about the possibility of a double dip recession. That is the elephant in the room. I think the nervousness is in part because this entire recession period has been so aggressively traumatic in so many directions. So we are skittish. We don't want to get burned again.

The experts are naturally in disagreement about what may occur. Many still believe that we have simply hit a weaker patch in the recovery. Others, and I believe this is a minority, believe that we are headed over the cliff.

The important thing is to remain calm, stay in tune with reports and activity in the market, and keep emotion out of it. Emotion and Wall Street do not mix.

Reuters: Week Ahead: Market stalls but no panic signs yet

...high is half way toward the market's definition of a correction -- a 10 percent fall from a recent peak.


"...They'll be looking for validation that this is just a soft patch we're going through, not the economy rolling over..."


"...attractive entry points for longer-term investors."