The third quarter ends today . . . Good!
It was awful, with the S&P losing about 12.5%. That's the good news. The bad news is that October is usually the worst month of the year! At 5AM, futures indicate the Dow will open about 90 to the downside, a fitting end to an awful month and beginning of a possibly worst one.
Back in April, I was expecting the bottom would be reached in Sept/Oct but now suspect it will be later. Politics can mess up things quickly but fixes things only slowly. I've studied the work of Joseph Schumpeter for years. He was the famous Austrian economist who did early research into economic cycles and coined the expression "creative destruction." While he was very successful in identifying economic patterns, he did so before the 24/7 news cycle gummed-up the political machinery. Whether this has shortened or lengthened economic cycles is a subject of debate among economists. It has certainly made it more problematic.
Since Europe is just now approving their July agreement and has not even started the approval process for their September "agreement", and since the July deficit debacle in the U.S. will return during the Christmas holidays, and since January is historically the best month of the year, I suspect politics trumps economic cycles . . . for now.
It was awful, with the S&P losing about 12.5%. That's the good news. The bad news is that October is usually the worst month of the year! At 5AM, futures indicate the Dow will open about 90 to the downside, a fitting end to an awful month and beginning of a possibly worst one.
Back in April, I was expecting the bottom would be reached in Sept/Oct but now suspect it will be later. Politics can mess up things quickly but fixes things only slowly. I've studied the work of Joseph Schumpeter for years. He was the famous Austrian economist who did early research into economic cycles and coined the expression "creative destruction." While he was very successful in identifying economic patterns, he did so before the 24/7 news cycle gummed-up the political machinery. Whether this has shortened or lengthened economic cycles is a subject of debate among economists. It has certainly made it more problematic.
Since Europe is just now approving their July agreement and has not even started the approval process for their September "agreement", and since the July deficit debacle in the U.S. will return during the Christmas holidays, and since January is historically the best month of the year, I suspect politics trumps economic cycles . . . for now.
