Kass: Sell the News
By Doug Kass at TheStreet.com:
I fully recognize that the crowd usually outsmarts the remnants and that the momentum in health care stocks and in the overall market has been strong.
The conventional view is that the Massachusetts election result will kill health reform and, thus, is bullish for health care stocks and for the market as a whole, but, for several reasons, I think that the crowd could prove mistaken on this one. I would not be surprised to see both health care stocks and the major market indices sell off over the short term.
A Scott Brown Senate win was growing more likely over the course of the past week…
The Massachusetts Senatorial race was not necessarily a referendum against the administration’s policies (health care being one of them); it’s broader than that. The populist uproar is geared toward the incumbent, toward anyone in power. It does not run on party lines, nor is it focused on health care. It is the zeitgeist of dissatisfaction, a sign of the times. Maybe it’s a function of high unemployment or the electorate ticked off at the wealthy and the largest institutions (especially of a banking kind). This dissatisfaction was expressed in the Democratic tsunami that brought Obama the Presidency, and it was seen yesterday in the Massachusetts Senatorial election that brought Brown the Senate seat. In other words, the mood of the country has been changing for a while, and it is being reflected in a very negative view toward those who have not suffered from high unemployment or from wayward derivative bets (and still got paid). And, as I have written before, this will lead to policies that are arguably needed but, generally speaking, are valuation deflating…
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