Bears Large And In Charge
The bears are back in their
familiar poll position, driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average and
consumer confidence lower as reaction to quarterly results and acceleration in
corporate layoffs threatens to dip tech shares deeper still into the red.
It wasn’t hard for the bears to find negatives last night, or this morning, as
Lucent Technologies
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PowerRating) and Amazon.com
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PowerRating) both demonstrated how far the economy is from a real and lasting
recovery. And while tech companies may be feeling the sharpest part of the
bear’s bite, the manufacturing sector is also bleeding today. Shares of 3M
(
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PowerRating)) and Alcoa
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PowerRating) are also
hitting the skids.
Finally, an old friend was actively contributing to the dreary feeling on Wall
Street, as Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in his testimony before the
Senate banking committee reiterated that economic turnaround might be quite a
ways off. The only faint hope the bulls have is that Mr. Greenspan also restated
the Fed’s collective opinion that there may be the need for further rate cuts
to spark economic recovery.
**Kudos
to fellow TradingMarkets.com commentator and regular member of DoctorJ & the
Traders (www.webfn.com,
Thursdays @ 4:30 pm CT) , Goran Yordanoff, for his recent calls in THQI and
the S&P cash. As baseball great Dizzy Dean used to say, “It
ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.”