Commonwealth's McMillan: Trouble's still coming, but not for a while

Brad McMillan, chief economist for Commonwealth Financial Network, says that there's "an enormous feel-bad headline economy," but the underlying fundamentals are solid enough to keep earnings growing, which will make it that the market does well, or at least avoids a protracted, deep downturn. McMillan worries that when the supply-chain breaks for food, for holiday shopping and more several months from now that it could trigger a recession, but he says that, for now, the numbers that normally signal that a grizzly bear market — a combination of a recession and a crashing market — aren't lined up to happen yet. Mark Newton, global head of technical strategy at Fundstrat Global Advisors, also is staying out of the recession camp, but he does "suspect that we can't just go to the moon right away," and thinks the market could be in for a 5% haircut this month. Newton says that earnings and the economy have been better than expected, which is why he is telling people to "put on the blindfold and put on earphones" to concentrate on strong technical trends and economic data that remain in good shape. Cary Sinnett, senior manager of financial planning at AICPA, discusses the group's survey which showed that while nearly 80% of Americans report having money set aside to cover living expenses and emergencies, the depth of those savings varies dramatically by age and gender, and the even among the savers less than one in five has enough on hand to cover more than a year's costs.