The best trade on Wall Street these days may be buying Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and companies whose earnings will increase as the U.S. economy recovers, while selling the banks that were behind the subprime market meltdown. Even as the 23 percent drop at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and 27 percent plunge in Citigroup Inc. made the first quarter the worst for U.S. stocks in more than five years, Wal-Mart reached a three-year high on the New York Stock Exchange. The world's biggest retailer, Darden Restaurants Inc., owner of the Olive Garden chains, and Pulte Homes Inc., the second-largest U.S. homebuilder, had their fastest start since at least 2004 on speculation spending will hold up as interest rates fall. An investor who shorted, or borrowed and sold, $1 million of Goldman in January and February and used the profit to buy Wal-Mart shares in March would have made $224,000 before transaction costs as of March 31, or an annualized return of 90 percent. ``The U.S. economy's had its ups and downs, but for all that's gone wrong there's a tremendous amount of personal income being generated,'' said Michael Aronstein, 54, president of Marketfield Asset Management LLC and a 29-year veteran on Wall Street. ``There's activity going on and in some sectors it's proceeding with a lot of vigor.'' Aronstein's New York-based fund climbed 7.5 percent since it began Oct. 12, three days after the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose to a record, compared with a 12 percent drop in the benchmark for American equities. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aXHM_4tlB6XY&refer=home
it's always easy to write those type of bullsht articles after the fact. If this article was published last year after the subprime fallout, then maybe the author will have some merits.