TWO meetings gave me pause in my bearishness this week. Both meetings were with independent strategists (i.e those not employed by investment banks) who had just come back from tours of clients and had been struck by their overwhelming air of gloom.
That was striking because a lot of the material that comes my way is from economists who generally take a fairly rosy view—the recent weak data are simply a repeat of the soft patch in 2010. In the optimists’ eyes, Japan will recover from the earthquake disruption, the oil price has reversed direction and China may have finished tightening. The three factors will combine to ensure a more robust economy in the second half of the year.
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