Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Todd Gold, Technical Strategist, Gruntal
& Co.: “Certainly the Intel news came as a surprise to us, however, we
had been forecasting weakness in the semiconductor stocks for some time since we
had seen the weakness for some time in the charts. At this point we’re a little
surprised by the action in the market so far today with the Composite showing
some real resilience. The pullback that we have seen so far was only around 25
points, and we’ve had quite a violent rally to the upside.
“What we’re looking for now is a potential, and I stress that, potential
climactic bottoming type of a day, where if we see around 2 billion shares
traded, and we do close at or near the highs of the day, then that would
certainly be encouraging to us. It wouldn’t so much signify that we are heading
straight back up on the Nasdaq Composite, but that we will be at least thwarting
the downside momentum.”
Arnie Owen, Managing Director of
Equities, Cruttenden Roth: “It’s September, and September is one of the
most treacherous months for the market. Everybody thinks it’s October, but for the
most part, except for some major events in Octobers in 1929 and 1987, October
has been a fairly good month for the market. September has traditionally been a
terrible month, so really it’s more of the same. Plus the Intel warning hasn’t
helped. I think the market’s acting awfully well considering what Intel had to
say.”
Brian Belski, Fundamental Market Analyst,
U.S. Bancorp/Piper Jaffray: “Over the past three years, the stock market
has endured four tech sector corrections (as measured by the monthly S&P 500
Technology Sector price percentage changes) of 10% or more, and one over 9% in
October 1997. The 10% or greater corrections occurred in August 1998, February
1999, and May 2000. We are including October 1997 data due to the importance of
the correction in terms of recent investor psychology and the overall
fundamental and market trends that have followed since. What we have found is
that the technology sector tends to rally strongly the month following its
subsequent downside correction, averaging a rebound of 8.83% following those
preceding four corrections.”