“What we tell clients all the time is that, when it comes to consumer names and goods, we always prefer plays that exhibit two factors: strong consumer demand and pricing power.”
“After this next round, people are going to be hugely down on things. People are going to say the economy lost all its momentum at the end of the third quarter.”
“This is a continuation of a trend that's already been in place. We don't have a huge inflation problem, but it seems to me that people don't give enough weight to the possibility something like that is brewing.”
“As growth stays sluggish and prices rise, companies are more hard-pressed to keep profits from declining. So they say, 'Sorry, we have to charge more'. They can't get away with that on discretionary stuff because people will hold off, but people will be stuck paying higher prices for need-type goods and services. It becomes a circular thing.”
“When people report that consumer confidence and business confidence are down, those things have less to do with the fundamental state of the economy than with this kind of funk, this uncertainty, this uneasy feeling. So anything [the government] does to say, 'Look, we understand, try this remedy' -- I'm all for anything like that.”
“People are becoming more accepting of a slow, gradual recovery, whereas last year, they had great growth numbers in mind, and when that didn't pan out, markets got hit hard. As long as data don't indicate a new round of fundamental economic deterioration, we're still on the same growth track.”
