Yesterday, I was reading the weekly commentary of my favorite sage, old Wharton professor, Dr. Jeremy Siegel. It was written last Friday, and it concluded “from a technical standpoint, the rebound in the Russell 2000 Index from its May bottom was encouraging, but it may retest these levels. It is not certain that, despite today’s (Friday’s) strong payroll number, a short term correction is not at hand.”
In other words, he was predicting a technical but only short term correction. Then, I looked at CNBC to see the Dow was down 272 points and wished the good professor was here. I’m sure he would remind us that 272 points when the Dow is near 17,000 is trivial, compared to the 272 points when the Dow was only 8,000 points in 2009. Then, I expect he would remind us that periodic 5-10 percent corrections are actually good for the stock market in the long run. Lastly, he would remind us that he expects the S&P to end the year at 2,050 at least, compared to 1,935 now or up 5.9%.
And, I would remind you that he was the singular most accurate forecaster last year, missing it by a mere two points!