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 NEW YORK (AP) - Stocks should be doing better. After all, 2005 corporate earnings have been great. The war in Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricanes seem to have barely scratched the economy.
But equity investors behave like careworn insomniacs at 3 a.m., their racing minds jumping from one worry to another.
Will energy prices keep rising? What if the housing bubble pops? What if the Federal Reserve's short-term interest rate hikes push the economy into a recession? Ballooning budget and trade deficits and zooming consumer debt also nibble at their minds. Then there's the possibility of another financial implosion like Enron or Long Term Capital. Or what some strategists call "exogenous shocks" — bird flu or another terrorist attack in the United States.
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