Is the bear market rally over?

Investors have been rattled by the weak US consumer and concerns over Chinese growth. But regardless of which way the stock market moves next, some stocks look good value. John Stepek looks at two US giants to buy now.

Is this the end of the great bear market rally?

Markets across the world took a tumble yesterday, with the FTSE 100 ending down 1.5% at 4,645, and the Dow Jones off by nearly 200 points. So why the big slide? As with most such market moves, there were plenty of stories you could pin the fall on after the fact.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.