Overheard On The Street

Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:

Tim Heekin, Director of Trading, Thomas
Weisel Partners: “The Dow, the Nasdaq, and the S&P 500 have each had a
pretty nice run here over the last 10 to 12 trading days, and I think we’re
running into the last few days before a three-day weekend. Volumes have dried
up. You have a lot of people out on vacation. The averages feel a little bit
tired here, and they have been going pretty much sideways to up for about 10
trading days. It just seems to me like they are going to give back a little bit
here in the next couple days.

As for next week, everybody will be back in their seats, and we’ll just have
to wait and see. There will be a lot of supply coming out from the calendar
probably in the second week of September, as well the lock-ups coming off a lot
of the IPOs that occurred early this year and late last year. That supply will
be over-hanging, but I still think probably you’ll have your early September
lift in the market. It could trend higher in early September, even with the
overhead of supply coming out.”

Tim Hayes, Global Equity Strategist, Ned
Davis Research: “We’ve been churning higher with low volume, and we’re
basically looking for the market to move into a corrective phase in September,
so I think we’ll have some choppy action here in the next few days. In
September, I’ll be looking for the volume to pick up, and there’s a good chance
that will happen to the downside for the first few weeks of September.

“We’ve had a normal kind of low-volume August churning, and we’re
entering into what tends to be a seasonally weak period when volume typically
picks up. I’m looking to see if after a correction that we resume some of the
favorable trends that have occurred this month. That could then set things up
for a good rally in the pre-election period.”

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