I'm still a bit nervous about jumping in.
Stock Selloff Offers Good Chance to Seek Bargains(CNBC) The wild selloff in stocks, which many analysts see as overreaction, could set up a perfect opportunity for investors to go bargain hunting.
The frantic run-up in oil prices and a 22-year high in unemployment sparked yet another round of panic-selling on Friday, a trend market pros say will continue until people stop getting rattled by every bit of bad news that comes along."It's the classic knee-jerk overreaction," Diane de Vries Ashley, managing partner of Zenith Capital Partners, said of Friday's market implosion. "I admire the concept of a thoughtful and logical market, I just don't think it exists."
The unemployment report set the stage for the sell-off.
Nevermind that the total number of new jobless claims actually was less than Wall Street had anticipated. Traders instead focused on the sharp rise in the percentage of jobless, from 5.1 percent to 5.5 percent. They took that as a sign that the economy was weakening, even though economists said the rise was attributable mostly to more unemployed people trying to get back in jobs market and college and high school students looking for summer work.
Then there was oil.
Crude prices surged more than $6 a barrel towards record highs, a phenomenon largely seen as speculator-influenced even though the supply-demand equation undeniably is a significant factor in the overall energy picture.
Still, it all added up to a wild close to a manic week in which the market scored its biggest single-day gain in two months on Thursday, then followed with Friday's unrelenting drop.
Some, though, weren't panicking.
"History dictates that the seeds of the next bull market are being planted right now. It's very often that first leg up will come amid a gloomy data scenario," says Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist at The Hartford.
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