As the tech bubble deflates, analysts are returning their attention to “value” stocks, in which the companies actually have earnings, and price-earnings ratios, by the standards of the tech bubble, appear more reasonable.

The stock market has been particularly fragrant over the last week or so.

Even some of the Bear’s normally bullish competitors are currently accepting that a recession is inevitable — four down days in the stock market will do that. Of more interest, however, is the question of what kind of recession we are to be favored with, and how long it will last.

This is the first of a weekly column that is intended to appear each Monday, an appropriately gloomy day of the week. Its rationale is that, in the past 10 years, the proportion of ‘Sell’ recommendations put out by Wall Street houses has declined from 9 percent of all research reports to 1 percent. Accordingly, […]