WEAK EARNINGS REPORTED THROUGH HOLIDAYS; WELL DUH!

Two stories hit the wire this morning, "Stocks lose ground on weak earnings start," and "Small business sentiment drops amid weak holidays," and as of this writing the markets are down about 30 points. But I have to tell you, I find this a little bit puzzling considering that the fact that we are not quite out of the woods on the consumer end of the recession is not new news. Nor are the jobs numbers which are still hovering around 10%. If people aren't working, or still aren't feeling a strong sense of job security they aren't going to spend their money. If you ask me, the recession, and low consumer demand should already be priced into the markets.

So, as things tend to go in these quick markets, it's just a knee-jerk reaction. I've talked about this before as being a time to jump in and take advantage of the overreaction. A long while back I wrote a blog entitled, "Jittery Investors Give Me the Cheaps," which basically was built on the premise that knee-jerk reactions from jittery short term investors typically provide an opportunity to get into a new position more cheaply, or to add shares to an existing position for less money.

Until this economy gets out of the doldrums, I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to take advantage of nervous traders.