Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Tony Cecin, Director of Equity Trading,
U.S. Bancorp/Piper Jaffray: “Obviously the market is responding exuberantly
to the Fed’s inter-meeting cut here. I think there was sort of a resignation, if
you would, that they weren’t going to do that and that they were going to wait
until the May time frame, and when they did it today it caught the whole market
by surprise. It’s been a buying frenzy ever since.
“I even think some of the sidelined money is coming into the market
here. I think you were even seeing that before the cut today because what you’ve
seen in the last few days is a kind of muted response to Cisco’s comments and a
positive response to Intel’s comments. There is just a feeling of scraping along
the bottom. The fact companies have gone out on a limb here in an FD environment
and have made those negative opinions known was accepted very positively by the
market in general and technology in general.”
John Roque, Vice President, Arnhold and
S. Bleichroeder: “Stocks can rally sharply, but it will be an either/or
rally. Either tech /growth rallies or defensive issues rally — and not a
broad-based, all encompassing, rising tide lifts all boats rally. The
combination of low investor confidence, continued concerns about earnings, and
the general lack of base patterns say any rally is unlikely to be the beginning
of something bigger and more important.
“Rather, a rally should be treated as a rally which tells us to play it
long and small or use it to reduce positions held too long. And that’s another
reason why we’re still cautious. Healthy rallies (read bull market rallies) are
generally broad-based and uniform, and we don’t expect that to develop
here.”
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