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CNBC Assistant Web Producer
The positive stream of earnings and economic data keeps coming, but the huge stock rally that started at the beginning of the year seems to be running out of steam. Stocks that can't rise in a good-news environment are stocks that are likely to fall, one strategist told CNBC Thursday.
"A market that fails to go up on good news is probably a market that's going to go down and there does seem to be a bit of a change of mindset here. I think we've got a bit of results fatigue," Nick Parsons, head of strategy at National Australia Bank, said.
U.S. stocks ended lower Wednesday. The downgrade of Wells Fargo [WFC
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] by analyst Richard Bove is cited by many market watchers as key to the change in sentiment. But Parsons points out that the weight of news is still largely positive.
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Sharon Lorimer |
At the start of the year investors pushed stocks higher simply because the news wasn't bad, Parsons said. Then there was a surge higher because the news was a lot better than feared, he added.
"Right now we've got a market where we've got an excellent stream of news, both on the macro side and in terms of results for the last five or six days, and we've got a market which is failing to go up," he said.
In the very near term, investors have got plenty of excuses to take money off the table, according to Parsons.
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