A lot of air has come out of the Internet stocks, but we have to put it into perspective, some of these stocks are up 1,500 percent or so in the matter of a couple of years. I think there is more downside. |
A lot of people believe that a lot of damage has been done recently and they want to put some money to work. We went from overbought to very oversold, but the fundamental news is still negative. |
A lot of people have been flocking to financials in expectation of further Fed rate cuts. The fact is that financial companies aren't going to be able to generate the type of revenue and earnings growth that analysts have been expecting. |
A lot of people have turned much more optimistic that once the blue chips get hit, that indicates the bear market is dead. Valuations are down, but they're still not cheap. |
A modest pullback in warranted. |
As a sector, technology will provide earnings growth irrespective of the economy slowing to a point that would impact other companies that are sensitive to the economy one way or the other. |
As we reach the end of the quarter, there's increasing optimism that the damage is done. We saw the beginning stages of the fact that when the economy slows, there are no sectors that go unscathed. |
Clearly there are signs that we are going to see a much less rosy picture in capital investment, and we're certainly in a bear market in technology. I would expect many investors still have not been able to pare back their exposure to technology to the degree that many would like to. |
Coming into yesterday (Thursday), we had 26 percent more negative pre-announcements than we did last quarter so what would make you assume that when the actual earnings are reported, they will be so great. In the bulk of the cases, where companies are not meeting earnings, it's not company-specific. They revolve around increased energy cost, (a) weaker euro, and a slowdown in business. |
Contrary to logic, people were hoping the Fed would change their bias to a neutral stance. Part of the exuberance earlier was an increased appreciation of the likelihood that we would have a president-elect before the market opens on Monday. |
Don't confuse weakness in the market as indicative of proof that the economy is coming apart at the seams. We're not in a freefall, economically speaking, and the technology sector has problems -- we all know that. |
DuPont is the first of the Dow components to warn that things are not that enticing and, indeed, energy prices do mean something. |
Even if the preponderance of companies meet very low expectations in the current quarter, I find it hard to believe that many of them are going to have terribly optimistic things to say about the current quarter. That will lead analysts to really hack away at 2002 expectations. |
Even though the Fed has tightened, it's not done a whole lot in the way of weakening the housing market. |
Everybody knows the Fed is going to lower rates. You'll start hearing people talk about more than a 50-basis-point (a half-percentage-point) rate cut -- that wouldn't shock me. |