Rate-Cut Winners and Losers

NOW that the Federal Reserve has cracked the interest rate ice, the next development will be to separate winners from losers.

- JEFFREY R. KOSNETT

Most headlines and popular attention focus on the record-setting stock market indexes, on the premise that cheaper credit is rocket fuel and key rates are heading lower still. Traders will sooner or later take profits, but do not mistake an ordinary correction born of overexuberance for real trouble until and unless heavy selling metastasizes and lasts longer than a couple of weeks. And that is unlikely as strong economic growth, capital investment, company earnings and steady consumer spending persist in negating any rational case for a switcheroo to a bear market.