'buy and hold' philosophy that I am actually pleased with myself for a
few things:
1. I am 100% cash
2. A further fall will not make me money, but will improve my fund's
performance against the market
3. I am totally at ease with the sell off
That's for moving to the dark side.
Sell-Off Was Another 'Flash Crash': Barton Biggs
Published: Friday, 5 Aug 2011 | 12:35 PM ET Text Size
By: Katie Little
Special to CNBC
Barton Biggs, a managing director with Traxis Partners, dismissed
Thursday's sell-off as "another Wall Street flash crash panic" and
said that, despite the recent spate of weak data, he still believes
the U.S. economy could show real growth over the next couple of
quarters.
"I'm sorry I can't get bearish here," Biggs told CNBC Friday. "There's
too much fear and too much panic selling. There's too much
momentum-oriented selling, and I don't think the global economy's
going to collapse.
Tight stop-loss limits and high frequency trading contributed to the
selling once the market started to cascade downward, Biggs said.
"This another Wall Street flash crash panic, and I think it's
overdone," he said. "Any long-term investor ought to be buying stock."
Art Cashin, director of floor operations for USB Financial Services,
has also called the market's steep drop "a classical technical
breakdown" and said high frequency trading was contributing to the
decline.
Biggs said he remains optimistic about the U.S. economy going forward,
citing a pick-up in retail spending in certain areas, good news in
Friday's employment numbers, and the rise of real incomes due to low
inflation as evidence that the economy could exhibit growth during the
next few quarters.
He added that he thinks the market could rally 5 to 7 percent in the
relatively short-term, and if the economic data is more encouraging,
the market could increase even further.
Not everyone is as optimistic about the global economy as Biggs is. In
an interview with CNBC, Mark Faber, editor and publisher of Boom, Doom
and Gloom Report, said investors should see any market bounce as a
selling opportunity.
