Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Peter Eliades, Editor & Publisher,
Stock Market Cycles: “I must say very frankly that it is kind of a
confusing time in the market simply because so many of the indices are doing so
many different things. The New York Composite Index is at new all-time highs,
and the Value Line Arithmetic Composite, which purports to be an unweighted
index measuring about 1500 stocks, is also at all-time highs. On the other hand,
just to show you how convoluted the market really is, there is the old Value
Line Geometric Composite, which measures exactly the same stocks, but is
calculated in a different way, which is significantly below its all-time highs, and in
fact in the last couple of days has gotten back above its 200-day moving
average.”
“Then, of course, you’ve got the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which
most people watch, and it has just lately come to life a little bit. It is
outperforming most of the other indices, such as the S&P 500 now, and
usually that’s not a good sign for the market when the 30 stocks of the Dow
outperform other larger, more comprehensive groups. Generally, that tends to be
a sign that more and more money is going into fewer and fewer stocks. Because so
many of these indices are doing so many different things, the overall tendency of a
market that is acting like that is that ultimately it will be resolved in a
negative fashion.”
Tony Cecin, Director of Equity Trading,
U.S. Bancorp/Piper Jaffray: “In a nutshell, we’re not seeing much of
anything today. No conviction. No real trends of any discernable nature. There’s
a little better day in the Nasdaq today, so a few of the techs are doing better.
Basically, you’ve got individual stock buying in individual sectors as opposed
to any kind of buying wave of any type. I’m not seeing any real conviction, and
I haven’t seen any all week. I think that basically, we just have to
fast-forward to the middle of September before we really see anything new.”