Now is the time to hold one's nerve

It is six months since I last wrote this column, and what a turbulent time it has been. The US economy is still growing strongly, but the pace of growth has moderated as the Federal Reserve had hoped. The reasons have been the judicious rises in US interest rates, combined with the rise in the global price of oil, which not everyone forecast. There have been pre-announcements from technology companies, such as Intel, Apple and Lucent, which have undershot their estimates, so that investors have become more nervous about the prospects for the whole of the technology sector. Companies...