The news from Cisco was disappointing for tech investors. The longer-term outlook was positive, but shorter term there were a few items in the report that unsettled. |
The optimist would say we're in the early stage of a broad rally, the pessimist would say this is a dead-cat bounce and markets are going to head lower as oil heads toward $50 a barrel. |
The primary reasons behind the back-to-back triple digit losses for the Dow are fears of a U.S. policy of protectionism against China and rising oil prices. |
The rally the past few days shows investors are willing to look past this period of uncertainty toward a pickup in growth in early 2006. It's a pretty optimistic viewpoint and that could change when the data comes in. |
The technical trends of the market and the sentiment has improved over the last few weeks, plus there are seasonal factors working in the market's favor. |
The tone in the market is a little better. We saw strong gains in Japan as they move toward an end to quantitative easing. |
There's a major rise in oil prices, increased investor worry about the upcoming earnings season and you're also seeing some profit-taking after the market's six-week run-up. |
This market is just extremely resilient, and if we don't get a major spike up in energy prices or interest rates from current levels, the strong earnings environment we find ourselves in could help carry the markets higher for several more weeks. |
Today, the markets once again pushed to new highs for the indices but the rally appears to have stalled. The likely culprit is that higher bond yields may finally be weighing on the minds of investors. |
Today's weak market performance is the result of some worse-than-expected earnings reports and a decline in the consumer confidence report. |
We're likely to see a correction this year after the run we've had, as well. But the outlook for third and fourth quarter earnings has been good, and if the economic data continue to improve, we could see a slightly more narrow decline that what people have been expecting. |
We're not seeing a lot of conviction, either by buyers or sellers, so far this week. |
We're not seeing a lot of follow-through in the Nasdaq. You're not seeing a dramatic weakening in the index, but Apple created a bit of a drag for tech stocks, and we haven't seen buyers really step up to the plate. |
We're really seeing almost a stealth rally today. Some of the most beaten-down groups of the last few days -- like airlines and retailers -- are seeing gains. But it's not just them. Five out of 10 S&P 500 groups are up at least 1 percent. |
We're seeing a continuation of the trends that were generally in place through much of the first quarter. We continue to see a number of uncertainties below the surface, but investors have mostly focused on the positives. |