I’ve heard from so many investors who are saying the same two things: First, they aren’t doing anything until they hear about the stress tests today and second, they wish the government would stop hyping things up (or down) the way they are. 

 

The markets have been at kind of a standstill all week because investors are worried about the next round of news from the stress tests that is due out today.  Of course, you can’t discount earnings season in all of this but it’s largely due to the stress tests.  Today should be quite a headliner of a day but don’t think that that will necessarily mean the markets will have a big day because next week more news about the stress tests is supposed to be released.

 

What’s the other thing that investors don’t like?  They don’t like how the government likes to hype up announcements of this and that.  All of this future-tense rhetoric.  On Friday we will announce this, on Tuesday you will hear from this person, and on Thursday we will announce when our next announcement will be.  It’s nice to know what’s coming, sure, but when it locks up the markets with fear it just gets everybody even more on edge than the average Wall Streeter already is and who is more on edge than somebody calling Wall St. their office?

 

Oh, and while I’m complaining, could we please quit writing the same tired journalistic lines about how the banks are no longer lending?  Fact:  They are lending and they are lending in large amounts.  I read another line this morning…”banks still aren’t lending.”  I don’t claim to be a banking expert.  I don’t even know enough about the inner workings of the average bank to sound more intelligent than the custodian who empties the trash cans after hours but I’ve read enough and heard enough from people who do know about banks who say that that isn’t true.  “Banks are lending” seems to be more of a media line than an actual truth.

 

Let’s have a great day today!