Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Brian Conroy, Head of Listed Trading,
J.P. Morgan: "It’s pretty quiet. With triple witching, we had some
expiration selling in the morning, and we’ll have some as well in the afternoon.
The banks are weak for the second day in a row. The market is really following
the financial sector’s lead, and tech is the next powerful group that’s just
kind of bucking the trend. It’s just been back and forth all week, but I guess
the main description of today is that it’s just very quiet. We’re just waiting
for what imbalances may occur this afternoon, if any."
Scott Bleier, Chief Investment
Strategist, Prime Charter Limited: "What this market has done is that it
has been consolidating in a rather lackluster fashion with a bias to the upside
in leadership stocks. Market breadth hasn’t been so great, and it’s just been
rather boring. This continues to be a confusing time with many cross-currents.
You have people thinking the drug sector will continue to work, people guessing
that the Fed is done and buying cyclicals, and you have people buying financial
stocks on and off on any given day. You have the utility average, which is a
precurser to rates, down big one day and up big another day. The market is
really spinning its wheels and actually locked in a range. It’s really trading
range action and consolidation from the move from two weeks ago which took us
from the bottom of our range to the bottom part of the upper third of our
range."
John Roque, Vice President, Arnhold and
S. Bleichroeder, Inc.: "We’re sticking with 4000 as our next upside target
for Nasdaq. While this number is not much higher than yesterday’s close (4%),
we’re still reluctant to get more aggressive on tech because we believe that
many stocks are going to find it hard to work through resistance. Also, most
stocks have yet to build bases to provide fuel for more important advances. The
best thing occurring in technology land is that the number of new lows has dried
up, and the number of new highs is improving, albeit slowly."