In case you missed it over the weekend Laszlo Birinyi was featured in two prominent articles citing his bullish case. First, Fortune featured Mr. Birinyi a "the most enthusiastic bull" in their investing section hoping to answer the question "Is the Rally for Real?"
Let's start
with the most enthusiastic, Laszlo Birinyi, founder of Birinyi Associates, who
notes that the current rally is the strongest ever. Since hitting its closing
low of 676 on March 9, the S&P 500 has risen 0.31% a day on average, he
says. That is three times faster than the previous fastest recovery in 1982,
which averaged a 0.12% per day rise. "This is the Usain Bolt of
markets," Birinyi says. "We just blew through the records.
Birinyi,
who warned his clients in October 2007 of impending doom in bank stocks,
expects more gains this year, in part because "no one is calling this a
bull market." Negative sentiment, of course, is a classic contrarian
indicator that stocks will keep climbing. Birinyi advises buying S&P 500
SPDRs (SPY)
to take advantage of the broad market rally.
In a second article, the New York Times wondered "Is the Recent Rally Irrational Exuberance?"
Despite
this grim backdrop, Laszlo Birinyi, president of Birinyi Associates, a stock
market research firm in Westport, Conn., believes that we are in the early stages of a classic bull market that has plenty of room to run.
“At any
juncture during a bull market over the last 50 years you could point to
economic problems,” he said. “The obvious problems aren’t the ones that I worry
about.” In his view, the economic weakness has been documented so well that the
market has already taken it into account. “The negatives are right in front of
your nose,” he said. “The market is looking past it.”
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