No Joy In Mudville
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Following
Friday’s 5.3% decline, the Nasdaq slid another 6.2% Monday to close below 2000
at levels not seen since November 1998. The selling spread to the blue-chips, as
both the Dow and S&P 500 lost more than 4% each. Financials were very weak,
as were recent holdouts like consumer stocks and cyclicals.
Volume
spiked up to 2.13 billion on the Nasdaq and 1.12 billion on the NYSE, which was
fairly heavy action given that Monday is usually a lighter volume day.
With
technology under such tremendous pressure, many analysts have commented that
some of the long-neglected styles continue to resurface.
“Value
investing is back. This
style had been deemed ‘too boring’ and had been blamed for having no ‘new-economy
vision’ in the past decade.
Still since WW2, the battle between growth and value investing has swung
like a pendulum lasting an average five years,” said Paul
Rabbitt, President, RabbittAnalytics.com.
“Growth
led for 8 long years and value was long overdue.
Moreover, the extreme manner in which growth led, characterized by the
Internet bubble in its final year of leadership, suggests value will steal the
show for another year or two. After all,
the market always carries trends to an extreme,” he added
According
to preliminary numbers, the Dow fell 436.37 to 10,208.25, the Nasdaq lost 129.27
to 1923.51, and the S&P 500 slipped 53.24 to 1180.18.
Most
sectors were in negative territory, but the gold and silver index
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did manage to eke out a 0.2% gain.
In
the red were banks
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down 5.9%, broker/dealers
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down 7.2%, and biotechnology
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The
semis
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into the close. The semis have seemingly refused to buckle with the rest of tech
and might be the group that signals a turn back up, if and when that finally
occirs.
Among
the day’s few winners was CheckFree Holdings
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1/4 on heavier-than-average volume.
Also
positive on the day was retailing software maker Retek
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managed to squeeze out a gain of 3/4 to 18 7/8.
Every
stock in the Dow was negative and among the big losers were General Electric
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down 9.6%, Microsoft
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Disney
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Looking
ahead, the February retail sales number is due out Tuesday at 8:30 AM ET, and it
should offer clues as to how what impact the recent market decline may be having
on consumers. Analysts expect an increase of 0.3%.