Big institutions are holding back their own capital. They're looking for an upside catalyst for stock prices. Any activity on the mergers and acquisition, buy-back or dividend fronts, mixed with good news out of energy or the Fed, would be a catalyst to bring the big institutions back into stock market. |
Earnings are driving the testing of the top end for the S&P 500, but geopolitical issues are here to stay for some time. That will put downward pressure on the stock market. |
Energy is going to catch the attention of the market. It's probably a force that's not going to leave because we're in transition from concern about oil to concerns about natural gas and how that will affect consumer spending as we head into winter. |
If the economy is as strong as the Fed is worried about, that's going to mean better corporate earnings. |
If the economy is as strong as the Fed is worried about, that's going to mean better corporate earnings. The driver is rotating from front-end consumer to back-end business spending. And business spending is being driven by the need to continually improve productivity, which brings in tech spending. |
It seems the storm is not going to be as strong as we feared and that was enough to take some of the selling pressure off stocks today. We are not likely to see real stock-buying this afternoon as most investors still want to see what happens with the storm during the weekend, but if damage is minimal, we might be bound for a rally on Monday. |
Just as the brokerages are often a harbinger for things to come in the financial sector, the exchanges will probably fit into that equation of forward- looking financial sector indicators, and they'll revolve around the volume trends. |
Just as the brokerages are often a harbinger for things to come in the financial sector, the exchanges will probably fit into that equation of forward-looking financial sector indicators, and they'll revolve around the volume trends. |
Many market observers are coming out with the belief that the market will break upward after the election. Such strong consensus views often don't turn out to be a reality. |
Markets are now focused squarely on inflation, ... Will it follow the great growth we've seen and force the Fed's hand to take rates up faster than the market currently anticipates? |
Markets are now focused squarely on inflation. Will it follow the great growth we've seen and force the Fed's hand to take rates up faster than the market currently anticipates? |
Overnight, you saw good news coming out of the tech sector and we suspect they are good harbingers of things to come out of the earnings season for the next couple of weeks. |
Retailers came out with pretty good reports. One would think we'll see a pretty good retail sales number, and that would give support to the market, absent much higher core inflation numbers. |
So far financial markets like what they're hearing from the chairman. |
Technically, we already saw this in 2005, since the S&P 500 [up 4.91%] slightly beat the Russell 2000 [up 4.55%]. But now in 2006, we are seeing a migration to large caps and mega caps. Some of this rotation is due to an expected slowdown in overall corporate profits. During such an environment, investors are more comfortable with large-cap companies, which are stable and more consistent in performance. |