Jason Tyler
Senior Vice President
Ariel Investments
A: Yes
When the S&P got down to between 680 and 690 that was obviously a period when the market was oversold. We are getting to a period where the economy isn’t in great shape yet, but investors are starting to exhibit less fear around what the future of the stock market is going to look like. Unemployment is still increasing but not at a dramatic rate. Drastically increasing unemployment makes investors worry about what corporate earnings are going to look like. That’s an important indicator as is consumer confidence.
Wells Fargo announced good earnings and the market rallied very strongly on that news. Financial stocks were up 70% overall. That was a significant one-day increase from just one company reporting good earnings. I think that is a sign that there has been so much fear in the market that even moderately good news goes a long way to changing investor behavior. Where you get glimmers of companies that are doing well–or not as bad as expected–that will have the stock market doing a lot better, even if the overall economy is not doing great. The second half of this year, we may see the stock market rally significantly higher than it is right now. If unemployment is down and consumer confidence is up, investors will get bullish again.
Where Tyler sees opportunities for investors: retail and financial services companies