Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Phil Roth, Chief Technical Market
Analyst, Morgan Stanley: “The action today is really a consolidation. Very
few areas are showing big price movement. We have a sharp selloff in oils, and
we have some decent strength in technology, but most of the market is not doing
very much. The market got overbought a week or two ago and is beginning to
consolidate, but big overbought readings rarely lead to sustained pullbacks.
They usually lead to rotational markets and further modest upside.”
Scott Curtis, Senior Equity Trader,
Kaufman Brothers: “We’re going through a rotation at this point thanks in
part to some comments by Morgan Stanley on Cisco. That’s helping some of the
Nasdaq issues. There have been some pretty decent moves out of drugs and oils
and some of the safe haven areas and into the techs. That’s been going on for a
couple of days.
“At this point, earnings season hasn’t been as bad as people thought.
Expectations were so low that I guess there wasn’t much to do on the downside.
Pretty much every number was better-than-expected, so with low expectations
we’ve done fairly well. The Fed has been pretty aggressive, and their last move
put a lot of confidence into the market. I don’t know that we are in a bull
market at this point, but we’re probably transitioning between a bear and a bull
market.”
John Roque, Vice President, Arnhold and
S. Bleichreder: “Damn, if you didn’t know any better you’d swear it was
late ’99/ early ’00 all over again. One of our buddies who is more trading
oriented than we are said yesterday in one of our email exchanges ‘It’s Pamplona
out there.’ With yesterday’s action resembling the July 6 through 14 Spanish
fiesta, it’s no wonder sales guys got the ‘I need beta’ plea from a normally
reserved client.”