STRATEGIES
It’s Not Just the Debt Ceiling
A host of issues face the markets, beyond the prospect of a possible default on U.S. debt. Hedge your bets and ride it out, our columnist says.
Jeff Sommer is the author of Strategies, a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy.
On the surface, the stock market has been remarkably calm.
Despite occasional declines, the S&P 500 has returned roughly 8 percent over the past year, including dividends. If that solid performance were the only information you had about the state of the markets, it might lead you to believe that there was nothing much to worry about.
But you would be wrong. The relatively calm markets of recent weeks are extraordinary, considering what lurks beneath them. Invest in the markets, certainly, but hedge your bets. The peaceful mood could sour quickly.
Just for a start, the debt ceiling crisis is still unfolding. If an agreement isn’t reached in Washington before early June, the United States could run out of money to pay all of its bills. This has never happened before, so we don’t really know how bad it would be — but it’s safe to say that it would range somewhere between awful to catastrophic. . ."
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