Financial analysts said they were surprised that despite higher inflat

Financial analysts said they were surprised that despite higher inflation and shrinking profits margins, investors continue pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was nicely balanced, with little inflation.
a
(A) continue pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was
(B) continue pouring money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as
(C) still continue pouring money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy as
(D) still continued to pour money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as
(E) continued to pour money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy was

1. Tense First clause "were surprised" = past progressive so we need another action that is in finished the past
A, B, C are wrong for using simple present

2. Idiom
B, D are wrong because "believing in" sounds like they believe in the economy itself, rather than the state of it being good.
"in the belief that" = "due to" it being good is much better

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja Daagh

Could you please explain why (D) is wrong and why (E) is correct?

As GMATGuru noted above, the phrase, "still continued" is redundant.

I could write this:

"Despite the protests of his children, Tim continued to play Lynyrd Skynyrd at 4am."

Or I could write this:

"Despite the protests of his children, Tim was still playing Lynyrd Skynyrd at 4am."

But it really doesn't make sense to say that Tim "still continued" to play. (Unlike his whiny kids, Tim knows that a late-night Skynyrd concert is never over until the "Free Bird" encore is complete.)

I hope that helps!

I know there are other reasons we can eliminate choice (a) (b) (d). However, I wonder if the ", believing" could be potentially modifying the financial analyst, instead of the "investor", the subject the question intends to modify. I understand the general rule for "comma + vb-ing" form modify the entire clause before the structure, and has to make sense for the subject in the previous sentence, but I got very confused whenever there is a relative clause embedded.

Also, it seams GMAT prefer the infinitive form when it comes to certain verbs, such as "continue, try", is this a definite rule or not?

Please share your thoughts, many thanks!!

FlyingWhale
If the author wanted to jump back to talking about the analysts, we'd need some signal for that. As it stands, we're much more likely to read "believing" as referring back to "investors," especially since that what makes most sense in the context.

Thanks for the reply!
So this is not one of those cases I can say what the modifier is modifying is confusing?

Can you please share thought about the second question, is Continue doing and try doing wrong in GMAT? Infinitive has to be used?

FlyingWhale
That's right. If a modifier seems to be modifying a certain part and that's what makes most sense, then there's no reason to say it's unclear. In general, we don't want to look for technical ambiguity ("it's possible to read this more than one way"); rather, we want to address real ambiguity (the intent is genuinely unclear) or mismatched terms (e.g. a noun modifier attaching to a verb, or an "it" pronoun whose only possible antecedent is plural). Consider this sentence:

My parents didn't want any donuts, and my siblings were stuffed from a day spent watching movies and devouring candy bars, so I ate them all.

Here, "them" is nowhere near "donuts," and there are plenty of intervening plural nouns, but do we have any doubt what I ate? Does anyone read this and think that I ate my family, or some movies, or the candy bars that were already eaten? No! Sure, the GMAT might be nice and say "so I ate the donuts myself," but if we saw "them," we wouldn't instantly need to fix it, because the ambiguity is only technical.

As for infinitives, it's hard to make any firm rules, since there are so many ways to use infinitives and other verb forms. In the case at hand, we're looking at something fairly specific: the construction "verb + infinitive" ("want to go," "try to do something," "continue to read," "learn to code," "plan to arrive early," "fail to appear," "agree to perform," "decline to state"). What do these have in common? The infinitive verb describes an action we want to refer to--something we wanted or tried to do, or something we did not do. In those cases, the infinitive is at the very least clearer than an -ing, in part because -ing forms have so many different uses. In many cases, the infinitive is the only option--you can't say "plan arriving early" or "I want going." Of course, there are many exceptions. An extremely common form in spoken English is "keep + -ing." We say "keep reading," but we could never say "keep to read." (The same goes for "stop" and "quit"): "stop bothering me," "quit smoking." So as you see, it's hard to say that infinitives are generally preferred, but in cases where they do work, an -ing form may be less clear.

Also note that the usage in the last paragraph is different from another very common "verb + infinitive" case, in which we use the infinitive to show the purpose or effect of an action: "dress to impress," "exercise to live longer," "say something to offend you." In those cases, the -ing form doesn't work at all, since that form does not show purpose. "I exercise living longer" doesn't really have any meaning.

So while there are plenty of uses for -ing forms (present participles, gerunds, etc.), there are definitely constructions in which they don't work well.

GMATNinja, I got this question right, but I came here to check my answer. There is a lot of comments, but no one of those sums it up nicely. Furthermore, I think that most of them are wrong when explaining why is A wrong (I see a bigger problem in meaning than in other things).

You're probably on the right track regarding (A). Yes, there's a tense issue, but it's not purely mechanical: the problem is that the tense issue ultimately makes the meaning unclear. Does "believing that the American economy was..." (past tense) modify "Financial analysts said they were surprised..." (also past tense)? Since both use past tense verbs, it seems reasonable to try to match up those parts of the sentence.

Logically, it makes more sense for "believing..." to modify "investors continue pouring money..." But why would we want to use the past tense verb "was" if we have the present tense verb "continue pouring"?

(E) avoids these issues and is therefore a better choice.

I hope that helps a bit!

This question is based on Tenses, Idiomatic Usage, and Construction.

The first point of elimination in this question is the redundant usage – still continue. Since the verb ‘continue’ already conveys the meaning of ‘even now’, the adverb ‘still’ is redundant in this sentence. So, Options C and D can be eliminated.

The verbs in the first part of the sentence are ‘said’ and ‘were surprised’, both of which are in the past tense. So, the verb in the underlined portion must also be in the same tense to maintain the consistency of tense. Options A and B contain the verb in the simple present tense. So, they can also be eliminated.

In Option E, the verb 'continued' is in the past tense.
Moreover, the construction of this option is better because the option contains the phrase “in the belief” rather than the participle modifier that has been used in the other options. The phrase “in the belief” makes it clear that it is the investors that continued to pour money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy was stable.
Another difference between this option and the others is the use of the word ‘belief’. The correct usage is – One believes something is/was… The word ‘belief’ is not followed by the conjunctions ‘as’ in any of its forms.
Therefore, E is the most appropriate option.

Jayanthi Kumar.

I don't think that the Verb-ing modifier "believing" modifies Investors. It modifies the verb continued. The doer of the modifier action (believing....) and the modified action (continued) is same, the Investors.

It was not harder one. At first we can eliminate option A & B due to sequence of tense,And option C & D for using as which is ambiguous and error of parallelism.
Now check one by one....


Financial analysts said they were surprised that despite higher inflation and shrinking profit margins, investors continue pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was nicely balanced, with little inflation.


(A) [s]continue[/s] pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was

(B) continue pouring money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as

(C) still continue pouring money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy as

(D) still continued to pour money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as

(E) continued to pour money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy was...(Correct)

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Question: Financial analysts said they were surprised that despite higher inflation and shrinking profit margins, investors continue pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was nicely balanced, with little inflation.

(A) continue pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was

(B) continue pouring money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as

(C) still continue pouring money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy as

(D) still continued to pour money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as

(E) continued to pour money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy was

___

Splits: i) verb tense[continue vs continued] and ii) "-ing" modifier [believing vs in the belief]

i) Verb Tense: The context of the sentence in itself is in past tense, that is, what the financial analysts said is in past tense - they were surprised. Hence, the underlined portion, which is also part of what the financial analysts said, should be in past tense. A, B and C are out.

ii) -ing modifier: The two things that you should keep in mind about -ing modifiers are that:

a) the doer of the -ing modifier should be the same as the doer of the main verb

and

b) the -ing modifier shows the effect of the main verb.

Checks for both: a) Is the doer of "continue pouring" and "believing" same? YES. The investors are the doers of both.
b) Is the -ing modifier "believing" an effect of the main verb "continue pouring"? NO. continue pouring does NOT cause "believing". Hence, -ing modifier is not correct in this context. Hence, D is out.

E is the correct answer here. The verb tenses match, and the context is clear. I was wary of the "in the belief" phrase, but remember - on the GMAT: When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Dont we require subjunctive construction in option E

Hello Jayshah1997,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the context here is of one person’s belief and thus, the context is not authoritative/imaginative/contrary-to-fact and thus, subjunctive mood is not ideal here.

Further, it is important to keep in mind that even when the nature of information is subjunctive, the usage of subjunctive mood is a “preference” and not a “must”. In other words, although the subjunctive mood is preferable in certain contexts, being in the subjunctive mood does not guarantee that an answer choice is correct, nor does not being in the subjunctive mood mean that an answer choice is incorrect. Even if an answer choice maintains a correct subjunctive mood structure in a context wherein the use of the subjunctive mood is warranted, it can still suffer from an error that makes it incorrect; in such a case, an answer choice that conveys the intended meaning, albeit without a subjunctive construction, is likely to be the correct answer choice.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

GMATNinja - in this question since financial analyst part is in past tense - the investors part also need to be in past - this eliminates A,b and C.
for D - believing in the American Economy - phrase would modify preceding clause but that did not make sense to me and also still was looking redundant.

would you please comment on to + verb vs verb+ing form distinction and also as vs was


Question
Financial analysts said they were surprised that despite higher inflation and shrinking profit margins, investors continue pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was nicely balanced, with little inflation.

continue pouring money into the stock market, believing that the American economy was
continue pouring money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as
still continue pouring money into the stock market in the belief in the American economy as
still continued to pour money into the stock market, believing in the American economy as
continued to pour money into the stock market in the belief that the American economy was

Notice that you didn't need to think about "to + verb vs. verb + -ing" or "as vs. was" to answer this one. (A) through (D) can be eliminated for other, better reasons -- reasons related to meaning and clarity.

So, rather than try to conjure up some rules governing the usage of "to + verb vs. verb + -ing" or "as vs. was", keep doing what you did here: think about meaning and clarity, and use POE to find the best choice out of the five available options.

I hope that helps a bit!