Showing Green At The Finish

December 28, 2000
Daniel Beighley

With just one trading day left in what has been an incredibly rough year for
stocks, the three major averages took a cue from falling consumer confidence
numbers and managed to all close in the green Thursday. The Nasdaq eked out a
0.7% gain to post its fourth win in the last five trading sessions. The Dow and
S&P 500 added 0.6% and 0.4%, respectively.

In economic news, consumer confidence fell to 128.3, its lowest level in two
years, and that marked the third straight monthly decline. The drop likely
reflects the edginess among consumers as a result of the 9-month Nasdaq bear
market.

Volume picked up just slightly from Wednesday’s levels, as 2.18 billion
shares changed hands on the Nasdaq and 1.01 billion shares traded on the NYSE.

“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,” said Edward Wedbush, President,
Webush Morgan Securities.

“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,” he added.

According to preliminary numbers, the Dow rose 65.60 to 10,868.76, the Nasdaq
gained 18.23 to 2557.58, and the S&P 500 added 5.27 to 1334.19.

Looking ahead, the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index will be released Friday
at 10:00 AM ET, and analysts look for a reading of 41.7.

Showing Green At The Finish

BUY THE FEAR, SELL THE GREED

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