Blame the Mullahs for Recent Market Declines (SPY, QQQQ)

The Iranians are manipulating events in the Middle East and are behind most global terrorist events. They are patrons to Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria. Further, they aide al Qaeda, directly support the insurgency in Iraq and are “friends” with North Korea. To doubt this is naïve. A confrontation is probably inevitable for western civilization.

These articles today in the Washington Post, The National Review and the New York Sun sum-up the situation neatly in my opinion.

So, what does all this have to do with the markets? Plenty. Gold prices are rising, stocks are falling (without compelling earnings news to break their fall), oil prices are rising and all hell seems about to break loose.

No one is participating in my little contest to find a better phrase/term for "geopolitical risks" so I’ll just have to keep typing it.

I just listened to well-known Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s describe how "high energy prices, even though not factored into the 'core rate' of inflation reports, may trickle down negatively affecting future inflation statistics and blah, blah, blah."

And, he goes on to say that their investment policy committee is reducing their target for the S&P from 1385 in 2006 to 1315—calling themselves "single-digit bulls". "Timid bulls" might be more apt. But, as economist Edgar Fiedler advised, "If you must forecast, forecast often":

Comments

[Daniel Winter:]

Iran is behind this bear market and Iraq was behind 9/11, you forgot to mention that!

2006 Jul 14 03:22 AM

[mropine:]

Iran is also behind global warming, famine, AIDS, heart disease, cancer, and everything wrong with the world today. And damn them for having all that oil under THEIR lands that WE want.

2006 Jul 14 03:04 PM