It was great that we had three or four days of a healthy bounce. But our take is that the market is being unduly punitive right now. |
It's a mixed picture. There's no question that the news is a lot better, but it may be priced into the market. |
It's always been a high-multiple stock among the retailers based on the reality of terrific business performance. Wal-Mart has many times in the last 15 years been a lousy investment possibility because it's priced so high. Our thinking is they've got to always be right. |
Merrill may be more of a tortoise, but they'll start to catch up. |
My sense is that you'll see a few more days of gains as a lot of money managers want to be long the market through the quarter end. |
O'Neal has a good sense of where the business focus should be. He's been able to take advantage of a good business environment. |
On a macro level, we are at the beginnings of an economic recovery, not as fast as some people want, and we may have some altercation with Iraq in the next six months. That uncertainty is putting the foot on the accelerator and pulling it off the accelerator at the same time. |
On any given day, the market is taking its cue from forecasts and results. Juniper was negative, so that's spilling through the Nasdaq. I think, overall, though, the trend through the rest of the year and into early next year will be more positive. |
Ostensibly, the advance was caused by oil coming down and some of the comments with the beige book. |
People are trying to figure out what the real-world implications of AOL's announcement are. |
People are trying to figure out what the real-world implications of AOL's announcement are. |
Profit news continues to be good, and we are seeing some relief from the profit taking of the last few weeks. But there is an ongoing tug-of-war between 'we've come too far too fast,' and 'the economic recovery is strong' and you're seeing that played out on a day-to-day basis. |
The CA investigation is an ongoing thing. They've had problems long before accounting scrutiny was fashionable, so the impact of that is muted. There is the sense that the market wants to shrug off the bad news. |
The forecasts for the second-half of the year for the most part seem to support a recovery, but to some extent, that's already priced into the market, so you're not seeing that much stock reaction. There's not a lot of conviction and some people will take profits. But I think there will continue to be a moderately upwards bias for the remainder of the year. |
The level of resistance [from Iraqis] is low, allowing investors to go back to the idea that war might be brief and the economy may bounce back faster and sooner than it would if this war were protracted. |