red-flags_N.htm Economists see red flags in the stock
market
NEW YORK — Ignoring warnings from Wall Street skeptics is as American as apple pie — especially when stock prices are rising and investors are
making lots of money, as they have since the market took off in early March. Sometimes, shutting out bearish lines of thought is a profitable
strategy. But it can also prove to be dangerous to an investor's financial well-being if the advice to proceed with caution turns out to be
correct.
"Eventually," Roubini says, "a correction has to occur." Rosenberg says he is "as nervous as I was in 2007," before the financial crisis hit.
He says the stock rally does not reflect reality and that prices reflect too bright an outlook for economic growth and corporate profits in 2010.
"If you have the view that it will be a very bumpy road to the next sustainable earnings expansion, stocks are very expensive," relative to
earnings, says Rosenberg, who prefers to use companies' reported earnings — and not operating earnings, which strip out all kinds of one-time
charges and so-called non-recurring losses. When you calculate a stock's price relative to these more conservative profit numbers, stocks appear far
more expensive.
After suffering huge losses last year, professional portfolio managers can't afford not to be invested in stocks right now, for fear of posting
subpar returns compared with their competition and industry benchmarks. "If you're a money manager, you are aware of the risks, but when you see
the market moving up day after day, it makes it hard to give credence to academic reasons why the market can't keep going higher," Bensignor
says.
This article makes an interesting point that portfolio managers are going to ignore the advice of economists if they feel that they are missing out on
potential earnings. Its important to see the difference between stock market investors and actual economists who might not be financially motivated to
see positive signs where they actually do not exist.
Personally I trust real economists, not CNBC...
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