Bulls and Bears

Adapted from the Aug. 14 Editors' Weblog: Bulls and Bears . Forbes' columnist Ken Fisher is increasingly bullish on stocks. He lists several positives that recently looked like negatives: excellent housing affordability, the end of the financial crisis as evidenced by rate spreads between risky paper (junk bonds) and safe paper (Treasurys), and attractive stock valuations when measured against gold and other commodities.

At TheStreet.com, Doug Kass isn't buying it. He's turning bearish after being bullish since the spring. Kass lists 10 reasons, but they boil down to this: he thinks this isn't a normal recession/recovery scenario.

While we won't know for some time which view is correct, Brett Arends of the Wall Street Journal offers something else to ponder: Statistics show that September is the stock market's poorest-performing month. "The median September [since 1926] saw losses of just 0.07 percent," Arends writes. "But the median month for the rest of the year gained 1.37 percent." So, September has definitely been worse, on average, but not horrible (rather surprising, given the number of "high profile" market events that occurred or started in September).

Of course, those are just averages. No one, least of all the "experts," knows what this particular September may hold.

• Bulls and Bears 

• The Bear Market is Over | Forbes
• Kass: A Summary of My Bearishness | TheStreet.com
• For Stocks, September May Be The Cruelest Month | WSJ.com

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