Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Robert Robbins, Market Strategist, The
Robinson Humphrey Co.: “We’re getting a sort of reflex bounce or oversold
rally. The real question now is tech. I think tech is the real driver of the
stock market and the reason why we’re departing from the seasonal-rally scenario
that we had going from the October low into the Nov. 6 high. If you look
at the magnitude of the tech decline since the Nov. 6 rally high where the
S&P was 7% above its October low, you see that tech went down 25% in terms
of the Morgan Stanley index.
“That index was a third of the market, so you take a third of 25% and
you get about 8%, and that’s what the S&P decline was. So, the whole market
decline in November was tech. Finance was okay. Finance, in fact, was okay the
whole decline all the way from the Sept. 1 high. So what we have is a
sector problem. It is a significant problem, but it’s not as big as the bad ones
really are.”
John Roque, Vice President, Arnhold and
S. Bleichroeder: “Here are some quantitative facts as to why tech/Nasdaq
better bounce here. Nasdaq new lows totaled 737. This is a big number and
greater than the 541 on November 22 and the highest number recorded since this
bear market began. In addition, it is the highest number recorded since October
1998. (Oct. 7: 747 and Oct. 8: 1326), and August 1998 (Aug. 27: 1000, Aug. 28:
728, and Aug. 31: 1263). If we take out the October and August 1998 periods,
yesterday’s total is the highest since July 16, 1996 when 791 new lows were
recorded on the Nasdaq.”
Brian Belski, Fundamental Market
Strategist, U.S. Bancorp/Piper Jaffray: “Equity fund inflows for the week
ending Nov. 29 was $1.5 billion. While another week of drastic outflows, in
our opinion, would have provided additional assurance that the investing public
was indeed “throwing in the towel,” we continue to believe the
longer-term key to the recent weekly statistics is the amount of money market
inflows, which this week amounted to $5.7 billion ($47.9 billion since
Nov. 1). We believe this stashing of cash will ultimately provide buying
support once the market solidifies.”