Diffused economic strength in the U.S. economy

Most Wall Street types are always trying to identify "hot" sectors of the economy to promote intensified trading, so the very nature of that orientation prevents them from comprehending a merely "warm" or "lukewarm" economy such as the U.S. has right now. For Wall Street, it is simply "Hot or Not." The U.S. economy is most decidedly not "hot." That's actually okay and the preferred state of the economy, with inflation reasonably under control and moderate but not overheated growth.

The problem here is that the Wall Street approach essentially says that if an economy is not booming, then it must be headed into a recession. This is not the case. The U.S. economy is not simply black or white. The U.S. economy has many shades of gray. Unfortunately, Wall Street doesn't "do" gray very well at all.

The good news about the U.S. economy is that there is a lot of "hidden" strength. It is hidden because it is diffused throughout the whole economy and not concentrated in any of the kind of clearly identifiable "hot spots" that Wall Street gravitates towards.

In any case, the bottom line is that you can't look to Wall Street for guidance as to the overall state of the U.S. economy today or how it will be shaping up in the months to come.

-- Jack Krupansky