Peter drucker, the celebrated thinker on manage-ment, once wrote that the great weakness of American business is that it knows no history. You would think that this criticism shouldn't extend to Wall Street houses, with their brain trusts of economists and research departments. You would be wrong. Today the investment community is convinced that once the Federal Reserve shifts from sly hints to bona fide interest rate hikes, stocks will get clobbered. Maybe even more than Iraq and oil prices, Fed fear is what has held back the market this year. And this in the face of good earnings news, which should be a tonic: 76% of S&P 500 stocks beat earnings estimates in the first quarter.
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