Staring today, our principle financial market reporter is, as he puts it, "on hiatus from the Street for two months." Vacationing with his family, he will not be filing during this time. He emphasizes the temporary nature of his withdrawal and denies that it has anything to do with the scary condition of the market and the host of contributing factors -- including the oil crisis, the falling dollar, the continuing credit crunch, worthless mortgages, and corporate downsizing -- that lead many to believe that the recession may be worse than even some bears forecast, with signs of stagflation all around, O dreaded evocation of the late 1970s.
In fact, says our intrepid correspondent (and I quote from his e-mail) there is "bullish sentiment regarding stocks and it is not confined to contrarians. New money is coming into the market, and there is reason to suppose that the second half of the year will be better than the first. If you keep cool and you have capital to risk, now might be the time to pick up one or two of the soundest stocks in the financial sector. You can get them cheap. . . . Energy prices are due for a correction. These things always go in cycles. Major imponderables loom on the investment horizon. Yes, indeed. But was there ever a time when that was not the case?"
