US is still a land of opportunity for stockpickers despite volatility

Having risen gently through the first two months of the year, a sudden bout of selling in late Febru...

Having risen gently through the first two months of the year, a sudden bout of selling in late February and early March drove Wall Street sharply lower. Why did this happen? A threat that the Chinese government might take steps to cool its stock market was the initial prompt for investors to reconsider their appetite for risk. But it was negative comments about the US economy from Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the difficulties reported by sub-prime lenders that were of more immediate concern to US investors. Our view has long been that the US economy will...