Execs at Reuters Summit Say Market is Reaching a Bottom

Despite some doomsayers predicting the Dow Jones Industrial Average could fall to 7,000 or lower, most of the speakers at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit said that the market has probably hit bottom. That said, they don’t see volatility going away anytime soon.

Noting how the Dow climbed 260 points on Friday despite news of 533,000 jobs lost in November, co-investment chief at Payden & Rygel Investment Management Chris Orndorff, said this could signal a turning point. “All year, people have been so pessimistic that [when there is] any kind of bad news, the market just goes down,” Orndorff said. “But when the market shrugs off bad news just as it did, investors are signaling that the worst is behind us.”

The legendary Bill Miller of Legg Mason proclaimed, “It looks as if the bottom has been made.”

ING Investment Strategist Brian Gendreau agreed, with some caveats: “We are in a bottoming process in the markets, but that doesn’t mean we are now entering a bull-market phase. Things take time to work [themselves] out.”