Correction Continues

Article Excerpt

As we said in our March 2 Successful Investor Hotline, North American stock markets could be sluggish or weak for a month or two. Since then, investor fears have shifted from China to so-called “sub-prime” lending to home buyers with less-than-sterling credit ratings. Investors fear that if tighter lending standards shut these buyers out of the market, it will have a negative effect on U.S. consumer spending. That’s a possibility — but it’s not a certainty, nor an overwhelming factor. We’d worry more if interest rates or unemployment were much higher than they are today, or if countries were raising barriers to world trade, or if any of several other risk factors were raising concerns. Our view is that the overall outlook is positive. But it may take weeks or months, and a drop of few hundred to a thousand or more points in the Dow Industrials and the TSX, before investors generally come around to that view. Of course, we could be…