Kass: The Case for a Summer Snooze Fest

This blog post originally appeared on RealMoney Silver on July 9 at 8:05 a.m. EDT.

Since I have been out for a few days of meaningful and persistent downside pressure, let's frame the market expectations that have led up to my current outlook for stocks over the balance of the summer and into the fall.

Like Shakespeare's Polonius, I adopted a neutral view of U.S. equities in late May in a column entitled "Neither a Bull nor a Bear Be."

As stocks continued to rise, I argued in early June on CNBC's "The Kudlow Report" that, while I remained confident that a generational low would not likely be breached for years (if not forever), equity valuations had nonetheless more than discounted the second derivative improvement in the economy, and stocks were running ahead of the real economy. ...