U.S. stocks are about flat on the day, which considering how Europe performed yesterday could be viewed as somewhat of a good indication. Yesterday in Greece, there was a small run on the banks, where people withdrew almost 900 million dollars from Greek banks on concerns that the country would be leave the European Union and their financial crisis would grow cripple the banks. This of course sent a ripple affect throughout the EU member country's and European bank stocks were down on average double digits...THEN, overnight (when European markets are open), the German Chancellor Merkel came out and said that the EU was committed to keeping Greece in the European Union, and this vote of endorsement caused the markets overseas to stabilize somewhat.
As has been the case for too many days of late, U.S. bank stocks are down again today as investors struggle to understand how the financial crisis will play out in Europe; as I've said however, people with a longer term investment approach need to focus on the stability and growth of OUR banking system and if they do so then they will see how attractive some of the stocks I've mentioned are (such as Etrade, KKR Financial, Sallie Mae, Citigroup, Bank of America, Och-Ziff, etc).
As I've been writing, the U.S. markets have turned negative on the day due to news that has just come out on tv that their is of course political gridlock in Washington on the debate on how to address and fix the growing budget deficit. One of the many concerns I've mentioned before is the lack of bipartisan cooperation in Washington and how that could serve to negatively impact our economy; so lets pray our elected politicians can actually accomplish something for a change.
I've been monitoring the stock list that I put together and I'll be posting an updated list that reflects what stocks I believe represent the best ways to be invested in the markets going forward (here's a hint, a lot of the stocks I originally wrote about are a heck of a lock more attractive now that the markets have been so ugly of late - remember we buy stocks when they are down and on sale and we sell stocks when they are up in price).
