A slowdown in GDP could inject a note of caution in copper and the other metals. All of the metals are a down a little bit today. |
All these earnings look pretty good. But after the huge stock run last year and the expectation of the good earnings, I think you're seeing a bit of that old 'sell the news' reaction. |
All things considered, we're doing OK here. Here we are in the seasonally worst time of the year, and we're hanging in there. |
Between Texas Instruments, the rise in oil prices, and commodities, we got hit today. But the decline wasn't terrible. Last week we had nice gains, and today, we're kind of consolidating. |
Blair is trying to put people's perspective in the right place. Maybe they expected too much in the first week. He's saying that we are making progress and we are going to try and work with the U.N., and that reassures people. |
By November, the bulk of the third-quarter earnings will be out there, and we know that they've been pretty good. But for stocks to go higher, we're going to need another catalyst. Expectations for a strong fourth quarter could do it, positive comments on the holiday season could do it, but really, I think it's going to be the economic news. |
Cyclical stocks should really not do well if the economy is going to slow, and you can see, look at the cyclical components of the Dow, a stock like International Paper, Du Pont, all at multi-year lows. I really don't see much there, I would avoid them. |
Decent economic news is being ignored. The market seems to be paralyzed by Iraq and terrorism -- it's just a mess. In another time, the [economic numbers] might have caused a rally or some kind of stability. |
Didn't look like we were going to do much in the beginning because the jobs number came in lower-than-expected and the Michigan number also came in lower. |
Earnings are not so great and we've got all these things we can't control, from military action in Afghanistan to the anthrax scare, so people are doing a little selling. |
Earnings have come in not as bad as the expectations. |
Even though the averages themselves are doing nothing, there are some special situations going on here. There's a lot of action away from the averages. |
For the year, the three major indexes aren't doing much, but considering the period we're in, the fact that the market has done all right is surprising. |
Friday's Dow movement shows that the market is in an uptrend. That's encouraging. The market is trying to anticipate a recovery before the economy. |
Futures are down now because of the response to Microsoft and Amazon.com, but that could change in the morning, depending on what oil is doing then. |