Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Peter Marin, Portfolio Manager, Superior
Capital Management: “One thing in the back of my mind is that December has
more major turning points in the market than any other month of the year, and
they tend to cluster around the fourth of December. So, that could coincide with a resolution of the election and remove that uncertainty from the
market, and that might clear the way for a rally attempt. In the meantime, I
think it’s just continued tough sledding and choppy whipsaw action.”
Michael O’Boyle, Managing Director of
Nasdaq Trading: “There’s a mood of vacillation out there in the Street.
Tallahassee has the nation right now, and we just don’t know whether we have a
Democratic or a Republican Administration yet, and it’s making a lot of people
just sit there. You can tell that by the drug sector. The volatility in the
pharmaceuticals and the drug makers just in the last three days is unbelievable.
Down hard, then up on Monday maybe 3% or 4%, some of them up 10% and now they’re
back off again. Overall, though, it’s just slow in the Nasdaq today.”
Robin Griffiths, Chief Technical Analyst,
HSBC: “I think what you are going to see, probably at one of the next two
FOMC meetings in December or January, is that Greenspan could remove his
tightening stance, and he might actually, if there was panic around, be able to
lower rates again. He could say that he over-called the economy because when he
was tooling he did not realize that we would have an oil shock as well. What he
would be trying to do is to not panic the public, and I think you would kind of
see the whites of their eyes if the market slipped to panic levels like
2500.”