Paul Mendelsohn Quotes (52 Quotes)

Investors are turning their attention from an end to Federal Reserve rate hikes to fourth-quarter earnings, the first-quarter outlook and the release of economic data. Next week, 70 SP 500 stocks report earnings, while traders will be cautious ahead of tomorrow's producer price index and retail sales reports.

Everyone is setting up for tomorrow's employment reports. It's a big mover of all markets, so people don't want to be caught on the wrong side. People want to go in neutral. We'll see this position squaring across the board ahead of that number.

One of the recent themes has been the falling dollar, higher materials and commodities. If that is reversing, you could see a rotation out of materials and commodities. At the same time, oils are getting hit by falling crude prices.

The market's been getting positive news from GM, oil and semiconductors. But we have the quadruple witching to contend with, which could lead to a lot of volatility, so even though we're up now, we could open anywhere.

The HP news is clearly positive, particularly for technology, ... and if nothing negative happens overnight, you could have a higher open. But we have CPI tomorrow, and that's a big unknown.

With expectations for the third quarter already built in, money managers have begun selling on the news and taking money off the table.

This is the first crack in the home building area. Home building has really driven a large portion of this economic advance, and any drop in this area of the market would have very powerful ramifications for GDP growth.

Everybody pretty much knows what they're going to do -- they're going to raise the fed funds rate, ... everybody's going to be looking at their policy statement to see what the future is going to bring.

It wasn't a good day across a lot of sectors. The rise we saw in the 10-year Treasury spooked some investors today. With the yield curve flattening, it could translate into a slowdown in the housing market.

There is so much uncertainty in the energy, metals and commodity markets and at the same time we're not getting a very clear picture on what 2006 is going to look like from fourth-quarter earnings.

If we see a clear outcome in Iraq, then if the economic news kicks in and it's pretty good too, that could be our catalyst. If not, then the (recent) declines become more worrisome.

We're trying to get a little rally going short-term, but today was a bit nerve-wracking.

Most traders will really be positioning for the October employment report. Economists are expecting that non-farm payrolls rose by approximately 50,000 during the month, providing evidence that with two straight months of employment growth, the jobs picture is finally turning around.

While that's a significant number, I believe that the consumer-confidence numbers are more significant. I'd be much more interested to see what the September numbers will be, so we can see what the damages on the economy from the hurricanes will be.

We saw a breakdown in financial stocks today. Banking stocks ran into some selling as we tried to push higher. We also had a pullback from the earlier rally in the technology, semiconductors and oil stocks.

When oil moved up near 70 a barrel last time, it really stalled things. We're seeing those fears of a similar impact creeping again. With oil higher, there are fears of what future CPI and PPI numbers will look like.

So far all of the news coming into the market today is negative.

Hopes for a good report on consumer confidence today is helping stock futures this morning. Any signs of higher confidence, which turn into higher spending, will be supportive to the markets.

There's a lot going on next week. There's the OPEC and G8 meetings this weekend, and a bunch of economic reports that the market is going to be watching carefully.

This morning we're being dominated by two factors -- positive news across the pond and a little bounce off of yesterday's sharp sell-off.

For individuals, inflation has been an issue for a while, but for the market, it really wasn't. Over the last few days, the psychology changed.

The yield curve is beginning to frighten people.

However, the market has already discounted first-quarter earnings, and maybe even second, ... The greater concern is about the economy going forward.

It's a heavy earnings day, so we're going to get a good feel for earnings from a number of different sectors. So far earnings have been good, with 70 percent of companies beating expectations.

There's a lot of information coming out next week, a lot on the economic side.

It's clear that employment growth this time around has been sub-par compared to previous economic recoveries. You need about the number of jobs that we're adding now just to stay even with the number of people entering the economy. It's very possible that we're going to continue to see sub-par growth.

The market is still being buoyed by the energy sector. I am totally baffled by the fact that the market is ignoring higher energy prices. But at some time, higher energy prices will have an impact.

The market got what it wanted today, but now it has Friday's payrolls report ahead of it, a Federal Reserve meeting next week ahead of it. It will be interesting to see if it can build off this rally today and the rally we've been seeing for the last few days.

Intel is going to have to have a very, very good report, or we could see more selling in that sector.

The G7 meeting is probably going to be pretty contentious. It remains to be seen if anything comes out of it that would influence the dollar on Monday.

The big problem for the market has been the news flow. Energy prices continue to rise, gold prices continue to go up and earnings are coming in very mixed.

In Europe, oil and commodity stocks were higher again and that seems to be the theme with crude oil above 74 this morning... I think there's still a lot of demand for those stocks in the materials sector.

Imports rose to a record 177.2 billion, while exports also increased, to a record 111.5 billion. This creates a higher probability that the advance fourth-quarter gross domestic product will not be upgraded substantially higher, since a higher trade deficit subtracts from GDP.

You probably just have some profit taking on people who've made some money on this move from 1,260 to 1,290 are on the SP 500.

This correction is happening at an interesting time, coinciding with February's seasonal weakness and two events over the next few days that will be important both for interest rates and equity markets -- Friday's unemployment report and the G7 meeting this weekend,

The PPI is important because it's the first piece of real inflation data of the year. And while the PPI has been rising, the CPI has not been keeping pace. Corporate America must be getting squeezed in the middle.

It's hard to say how the market will react to this tomorrow. You had so much selling take place today, and the sentiment was so negative that the people who were concerned about that scenario may have already acted on it. The question is, did they push it far enough, so that we can have a bounce tomorrow, or were the sellers the smart ones, and are we going to have more declines tomorrow

With lower-than-expected growth, it makes the job a lot easier for the Fed -- especially with its two new Bush-appointed members -- to pause from its rate-hiking plan.

The employment situation is always a market mover because it is one of the Fed's favorite indicators when it comes to designing their policy statement.

The big question is whether the earnings growth is already built into the market, or can it help us move higher. It's very hard to answer that. Earnings should be the big driver of the market right now, but you seem to have this cross-current of events that are challenging that.

We're at pretty high levels on the indexes, there's a lot of economic news coming out over the next few days, and Friday is a quadruple witching day, all of which is adding to the volatility and the pullback.

It's a big week on the international front and not just from our side. The Bank of England and the Bank of Canada will be making announcements next week plus the Bank of Japan says it's going to start draining liquidity from its system in advance of its first rate hike in years.

We're back to the point where a good payroll number will be seen as bad, ... particularly since (Treasury) bonds have been setting up to sell off.

Overall, the Intel mid-quarter update was quite bullish. I would suspect unless something major happens overnight you are looking at a higher opening based on the Intel news.

Investors appear to be taking profits in the technology, energy and materials sectors. In addition, financial stocks could come under pressure as rising yields on intermediate-term Treasuries begin to have a negative impact on the mortgage market and credit card debt.

It's been a pretty bad month, but today was a pretty good ending under the circumstances, considering that crude oil closed at a new high and that GDP numbers were so poor,

There's been a lot of selling in the blue-chip area over the last two weeks, with a rotation into high tech, and that seems to be continuing today.

The major problem weighing here this morning is Dell, ... They missed revenue projections by a lot, and their earnings were also at the low end of the target, so that is reminding market participants that there may be a consumer slowdown taking place.

I think the issue that dominated today was the Wal-Mart announcement, because it made investors wonder if we're going through another slowdown, ... That certainly weighed on stocks.

It's going to be a really busy day. All of this means you're probably going to see a lot of volatility.