the investment banks and economists may come out and lower second-half gross domestic product growth forecasts. |
The issues that have captured investors' attention over the last few weeks have cooled down, but they're still there. We don't think the market is in a dire situation, but we don't think we're in anything other than a trading range. |
The little bear-market rally we saw earlier and yesterday just ran out of buyers. |
The long-term trend of the market is upward, but it's not surprising that we had a pullback for a few sessions. |
The main thing is the economic news looks like its steadily improving and that should continue to help stocks. |
The market can find something good and something bad in every economic number. If the number is strong, that's a positive, but if its really strong, people may worry about interest rates. |
The most important read this week is the first look at GDP growth in the second quarter, ... A number of companies, including GE recently, have talked about April and May being tough, but conditions picking up in June, particularly the second half, and the GDP number will likely reflect that. |
The pall of interest rates continues to hang over the market. |
The prospect of nearing the September lows is propping up the market. Certainly the news was bad last night, but the market action over the last several days has been more positive. |
The question is when does the economy recover and to what extent does it recover? |
The talk is that the Fed is going to be getting more aggressive soon, and may start raising rates by 50 basis points at a time. It's not going to happen this time, because (Fed Chairman) Alan Greenspan knows he needs to prepare the market for this in advance. |
The two issues regarding rates that have been in front of the markets for weeks have been 'when will rates rise, and by how much?,' |
The waters remain very muddy in terms of the economy, ... Friday's payrolls report made the case that the economy still has some life to it, but it's not clear yet whether the slowdown in March was temporary. |
The waters remain very muddy in terms of the economy. Friday's payrolls report made the case that the economy still has some life to it, but it's not clear yet whether the slowdown in March was temporary. |
There have been few negative pre-announcements and a number of positive ones, ... Third-quarter earnings should be strong and that should continue to support the stock market. But there will always be pullbacks and volatility. There's always the potential for people to sell the news and you may see that in the short term. |