Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Edward Wedbush, President, Webush Morgan
Securities: “In general I think we are likely to have a rally continue
right into the New Year. I suspect that some of the technology areas will
participate in the rally. I believe that many of the microcap and small cap
stocks have been well oversold, and I am recommending some shopping here at year
end in some of these items that have been sold way down. I would like to think
that a lot of it is affected by tax selling. Even over the last few years tax
selling has generally been down much earlier than waiting until the last week of
December. I personally see a lot of tax selling here in some of those low-priced
microcap stocks.
“It appears that the Dow Jones Industrials are sitting right up there
and not really reflecting much of the bear market. Some of the retail stocks
like Wal-Mart are quite strong here at year-end, which is a little bit surprising
to me in view of the tempered prospects for fourth quarter revenues and
earnings.”
Paul Desmond, President, Lowrey’s
Research: “We really have three different markets going on right now. The
Nasdaq appears to be in a clear down trend pattern, and we don’t really see much
hope for anything much more than a fairly limited rally in the immediate future.
Then on the New York there are really two separate groups. One are stocks that
are clearly in weakening patterns, and then the second group of stocks are
stocks that almost all bottomed in October and still appear to be in strong
uptrending patterns.
“So you really can’t talk about ‘The Market’ anymore; you have to talk
about each one of these as a completely separate entity. For the stocks that
bottomed in October, we don’t really see any dramatic evidence that the uptrend
in those stocks is over yet, so we’re expecting further new highs in a lot of
those stocks. For the rest of the New York, we have pretty much taken a
defensive position on those issues that did not bottom in October and are
treating any rallies that come in here as being strictly short term.”