Daily Market Update – June 25, 2014 (9:00 AM) It’s often said that the market discounts the future and reflects the situation six months from now. With another revision of the first quarter’s GDP now indicating a negative 2.9% GDP if you could go back in time by about 6 months, I would bet you that those investing would be pretty unhappy to discover that they were following a fantasy and plowing their money into that fantasy. Except that there may now be much consequence for that kind of misrepresentation of the health of the economy. With all of the reasons to believe that the economy had been growing, albeit slowly, it was believed to be growing and the market chugged along in anticipation that it would keep going that way. The real optimists would shrug this off and simply say that six months from now our economy will be even more robust than it is today and that alone makes it reasonable to invest in stocks. You do have to wonder whether such large revisions begin to put some seminal metrics into the same league as those provided, and regularly derided, by the Chinese government. Those numbers are routinely dismissed despite the fact that they will move the markets on the day of their release and then so frequently those moves are quickly reversed as investors remember that the data often has no basis in fact. This morning as the revision came out the immediate response was negative, but that fairly quickly corrected itself. Coming off yesterday’s very surprising loss that accelerated into the close you might believe that any negative news would be magnified, but that’s not appearing to be the case. Approaching mid-week, this is shaping up to be one of the slowest trading weeks that I can recall, especially when having so much to spend. What I thought were relative bargains yesterday got caught up in the sell-off that characterized the afternoon and that has to be a concern for additional positions that may be considered for purchase. Given the current environment it would be nice to see something tangible to provide confidence that the market can sustain itself at these levels. Despite assurances from the Federal Reserve that would favor stocks over bonds, the deluge of IPO offerings leaves a bad taste for many who remember that as being a clarion call for bad things to come. While there may be a basis for that belief the rise of the market has been fairly slow, regular and sustained and isn’t the kind that could be grouped together with past speculative bubbles. While the Employment Situation Report hasn’t been very important lately, I think that next week’s report may conceivably become a market mover if it doesn’t significantly advance the thought that there are many more people in a position to spend their money and support economic growth. With wh To its credit, given the horrible revision of this morning and sell-offs in Asia, the preliminary read on this morning’s market isn’t terribly bad, so you never really do know what awaits. Turning away from the stock ticker may be done only at peril.
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