Argent Quarterly Investment Commentary – October 2011
“Just because you got the monkey off your back, doesn’t mean the circus has left town.” – George Carlin
A bitter and toxic debt limit debate, combined with doubts about the ability of policymakers in Europeto act decisively, led to the worst quarterly drubbing for stocks since late 2008. Even though the U.S.economy has improved dramatically over the past three years, these events gave investors a punishing reminder that we are not out of the woods. The stock market has fallen for five consecutive months, and stock market gyrations in August and September resulted in three of every four trading days producing either a negative or positive triple-digit close on the Dow Jones – about 1 percent daily. As Leslie Nielson indelicately stated in Naked Gun, “The market is like a blind man at an orgy, groping for a bottom.”
