Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens observes:
“Judging by the giddy delight investors have taken in ‘better’ earnings news over the last two weeks, we expect they will positively wet themselves when they get a load of the new saving stats. I mean the prospect that dis-saving was never as bad… and that current saving is even better … surely ranks as more compelling than having a handful of companies beat beaten-down expectations by a penny. Particularly when those beats were accompanied by NO…or uniformly grim…guidance and, in the case of financials, were achieved by dint of increased risk-taking.
Label me “prudish”, but beefing up prop trading and reducing loan loss provisions (precisely as the Alt-A/Option ARM reset wave begins and the Commercial Real Estate losses mount) doesn’t exactly blow my skirt up.”
Forget any concepts you have of mathematical certainty regarding more/less or better/worse. With Less Bad as the new Good, even “Better” has become a subjective measure.
Like Beauty, apparently, Good and Bad is now in the eye of the beholder . . .
What's been said:
Discussions found on the web: