Bearly a correction

The stocks (indexes, actually) started out positively today and, despite the midday weakness could end that way, because those great spreaders of joy and myrrh and leveraged derivatives, Goldman Sachs, have produced over-the-top profits, much of which was built on the bet that the stuff they were spreading was more manure than fertilizer.

This is another iteration of an ongoing theme. (See, You can't get there from here: "No doubt Goldman will already be making money from it.")

This is, of course, in the context of merely a correction in the stock indexes. For all the ballyhoo, you'd think we'd be in a fair dinkum bear market, but we can't seem to organize one of those; "not even a pre-pubescent bear market".

My Precious is running out of Patience.

Not so Neil Welch, an analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton. He reckons there's good value and buying time yet to come, particularly for brokerage stocks:

“Why not wait for a proper bear market? It’s not clear that now is the right time cyclically.”