Overheard On The Street
Here’s what they’re saying at mid-day:
Jay Suskind, Director of Trading, Ryan,
Beck & Co.: "It’s kind of directionless. There hasn’t been any big
economic numbers. From an earnings standpoint, we haven’t seen too much except
for the broker/dealers, obviously. I think as we meander toward the Fed meeting,
I think we’ll see the market rally somewhat with the anticipation of nothing
being done. What keeps the market from really rallying is the perception that
the Fed will still keep their foot lightly covered on the brake. But as far as
today, there’s some pullbacks and profit-taking, but no real leadership out
there today."
Jim Volk, Co-Director of Institutional
Trading, D.A. Davidson: "I think these markets are finally trying to digest
a little bit the move in the Nasdaq market to the upside for the last few days.
Also, this bond market still hasn’t quite straightened out, so we’ve got a
little ways to go in terms of seeing what the Fed’s going to do. We’ve had some
pre-announcement disappointments, and we’re toward the end of the quarter, so I
think people just want to wait to see how things are going to sort out."
Bryan Brown, Principal, Spectrum Equity
Services, LLC: "Consensus wisdom is that the market is now in some sort of
summer rally. Such a rally would be confirmed by two things. One would be the
standard seasonal pattern while the second would be the normal election-year
pattern, which has a powerful, positive correlation with rallies at this time of
year. Unfortunately, there are cross-currents out there that argue that the Dow
in particular is in a consolidation phase with higher-than-normal seasonal risk
at the moment. One of the key indicators that confirms this conclusion is the
CBOE volatility index
(
VIX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating).
"The VIX argues that we are at or very near a short-term inflection
point, and that material upside progress from this point is probably not likely.
The question is whether we buy the consensus wisdom about the summer rally or
whether we pay attention to the red flag on the VIX and on a couple of other
indicators. I think the answer is that we should be conservative here. The
conclusion is that we’re at a period of time that it’s probably a little too
early to be aggressively optimistic about a summer rally."