Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Todd Gold, Technical Strategist, Gruntal
& Co.: “We’re seeing a continuation of the prevailing trend. Certainly
the rallies over the last few days were less than stellar. Although we heard
many analysts on TV speaking about the quality of the rallies that we saw, those
days gapped up strong but then closed below the open, and typically that’s a
sign of weakness in my opinion. We have no bases to speak about in most large
technology stocks. Therefore, rallies should continue to be sold in our opinion.
“We think we will continue to see lower prices here as these stocks
really need time to stabilize, and the key ingredient again is time. And we
don’t think that without time as the key ingredient that we are going to see any
sustainable bottoms in the Nasdaq Composite. So we would not be buying tech
stocks here unless you’re a scalper looking for a very short term trade. We
would be out of the way on the Nasdaq Composite as we believe it will head
toward 2000 and ultimately around 1800.”
Jay Suskind, Director of Trading, Ryan
Beck & Co.: “Everyone was focused on the employment numbers, and then
Intel came in with a warning and surprised everybody. I think people were kind
of thinking we could shrug off the Intel announcement with some good employment
news. Then the numbers came out and caused a little indecision. On one hand
people worried that the economy was not as weak as we thought, and that the Fed
might not be that aggressive in cutting rates.
“On the other hand there was the inflationary concerns raised by the
wage number. Between the two, it was an excuse on a Friday to sell since people
are afraid to be long stocks here. Either this is bottoming action in both the
economy and the market and we’re seeing the end of the bear market or we still
have another leg down and not quite there yet. I think somewhere in the middle
is the truth.”