Thanks, But No Thanks
Forty-six
percent and counting.
That’s what this historic bear has
incurred on the Nasdaq since the March 10 top.
When they raid the party, they usually
get everyone.
The legendary Bill O’Neil said this,
or something similar, in his first book.
Watching the purportedly-invincible
Brocade
(
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(
JNPR |
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PowerRating), the stock
that some bet would pose the stiffest challenge to Cisco
(
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PowerRating) since
Wellfleet, come down 55%, should drive home the importance of general market
direction.
That’s not to mention the 53% clubbing
that Oracle
(
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(
AOL |
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the ’98 drawdown.
Cisco? It came off 45%.
Elsewhere, of note is the action in
some restaurant and apparel stocks.
The behavior in some of these things
flies in the face of some forecasts for a severe economic slowdown in ’01.
Restaurants generally are among the
first groups to respond to the light at the end of a recession’s tunnel, the
immediate beneficiary of new jobs creation.
Perhaps something like Brinker
(
EAT |
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PowerRating)
is being bid up because of its high earnings stability.
But then why are the apparels —
certainly a cyclical group — showing such high relative strength?
I mention these segments as nothing
more than observations, notes off a scorecard.
Regulars to this space bear with me
for a moment, but for those of you new to this space, trading in anything with a
horizon of greater than a few days has, and remains, a high-risk endeavor.
This means that the long-side-only
trader in search of gains of several weeks to several months — the intermediate
term — must sit in cash until the storm is over.