While I don’t like Goldman Sachs, I do have great respect for their research. Their chief equity strategist just predicted the current October volatility is now over, and the S&P 500 will resume its climb, as the underlying fundamentals remain strong. They predict the S&P will end the year at 2,850 or up about 3%. He is correct that the underlying fundamentals are really strong.
But, the “teachable moment” is that periods of volatility or corrections like this are perfectly normal. They come, and they go. So, what does everybody get so scared? It is probably a mismatch in time periods. Clearly, there is no recession right now, and equally clear, there is a recession at some point in our future. A recession now is very different than a recession two years from now.
