Great expectations often lead to disappointment. We are in the midst of an economic recovery from the reaction to COVID-19, and expectations are indeed getting great. Today our great expectations could lead to disappointment coupled with inflation.
Right now there is a tug of war going on between people who believe that all this stimulus and the Fed keeping rates low will lead to wonderful economic growth, and those who believe that all this spending on top of easy money will lead to simultaneous high unemployment, high interest rates, and high inflation. What does this mean for the market? That is a good question. When things get uncertain and the market is not sure where to go, bottom-up investors tend to do best.
Lay investors buy the stock of really good companies and hold on to it. That is investing. GameStop is not such a company, and the people buying its stock have no intention of holding it and gifting it to their kids. This isn’t investing, it is trading, and there is a huge difference.
To the extent that what happened to Gamestop is a problem, it is all due to the fact that the SEC has allowed short sellers to run amuck for more than a decade now.
For what seems like years now, we have been talking about the market’s unhealthy skew toward large-growth companies. Some of our clients have even taken to making fun of me because of my insistence that this will pass. The season will change, value is coming.
