Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of February 5, 2013?

Article Excerpt

You hear a lot of negative stock market commentary these days, but it’s old, and none of it is particularly convincing. Some concerns Europe’s finances. Greece is still going broke. That surprises no one. But now the commentators add that France could be the next Greece in a few years, if it fails to make needed changes etc. Other concerns revolve around offhand economic observations and predictions. One story has it that productivity growth is drying up because all the big inventions—the Internet, computers, cell phones etc.—have already made the bulk of their impact on the economy. We heard something like that in the 1970s and early 1980s, another period when the stock market failed to make any progress for a number of years. Back then, when pessimists said all the big inventions had already been introduced, they were referring to automobiles, airplanes, telephones, motion pictures, radio and TV. Others are based on valuation analyses. Pessimists complain that p/e ratios are…