Donald Selkin Quotes (87 Quotes)

Even though the averages themselves are doing nothing, there are some special situations going on here. There's a lot of action away from the averages.

Right now business stinks, consumer confidence is down, the travel industry is suffering and the economic reports haven't been good and any economic recovery is going to be linked to the war. There haven't been too many first-quarter negative pre-announcements, but I'm still worried about corporate profits in the first quarter.

In the next few weeks, if the earnings pre-announcement period goes smoothly, which I think it will, and the economic news keeps showing improvement, I think we can make some gains. I don't think we're going to rip-roar higher, but I think we could still make some choppy gains through the end of the year, maybe hit those psychological round numbers by the end of the year -- 2,000 on the Nasdaq, 10,000 on the Dow.

I hate to say it, but maybe there's a bet that if Kerry wins, (former Secretary of the Treasury) Robert Rubin will take over as Fed chairman, and the market would like that.

The market is adjusting to the fact that corporate profits may not be as high as was previously thought and that the economic recovery may move at a slower pace than it did in the first quarter.

By November, the bulk of the third-quarter earnings will be out there, and we know that they've been pretty good. But for stocks to go higher, we're going to need another catalyst. Expectations for a strong fourth quarter could do it, positive comments on the holiday season could do it, but really, I think it's going to be the economic news.

I think the best we could hope for now is the market kind of fits in and starts to try to build a good base here, go up a little, pull back. And then hopefully as we get closer to the end of the second quarter, the earnings prospects, if they are better, should provide us a base to perhaps do a little better later in the year.

There's a lot of skepticism among professionals that too many people are trying to jump in -- so it could be a sign of the top.

This is the classic 'buy the rumor, sell the news' reaction. The market is expecting the second-quarter earnings are going to meet or beat, so even though Yahoo almost tripled its earnings, you're seeing some selling.

The perception is that maybe things are getting better. I mean, how much more can these guys take We've bombed the hell out of Iraq, and we have them surrounded.

Intel's news will have an impact on tech tomorrow, but it's going to be overshadowed by the jobs report.

We have the consumer confidence report tomorrow. I don't see how that's going to be any good. I would consider it a victory if we get (a reading) of 82.

This was a strange day, but overall it was OK. All other things being equal, we should open higher tomorrow.

Individual stocks can go up, but the market is too overbought internally and there is too much complacency for a rally.

Some of the stocks that rallied in advance of a possible Bush victory might be vulnerable.

It's a special situation. Individual stocks that are heavily weighted are doing well.

If we can hit these economic numbers and the earnings are good, and we can chug a little higher this week, that would be helpful. The wild card is still oil.

I think it's interesting that on a day when crude oil closes over 50 a barrel for the first time, the market is flying.

Iraq's army is reportedly weaker than it was in 1991 during the Gulf war, and our military technology is reportedly a lot stronger. So there's a perception that if there is a war, it will be quick. Everyone's been hoping that once the war is over, corporations and consumers will pick up spending as well, so you have investors not wanting to be left out should that happen.

On the surface, the Microsoft news was terrific. When a company says it's paying a dividend and announces a 2-for-1 stock split, that's usually a sign of good things to come. But then they warned about the year and said IT (information technology) spending wasn't going to pick up, and so the stock is selling.

If it comes in too weak, you get worries about the economy. If you get a blowout number, everyone will get obsessed about interest rates again, the bond market will go into a tizzy, and stocks will slide.

Normally, lower rates would be seen as a positive for stocks, but in this case, it seems like the Fed is behind the curve and the Fed is supposed to be leading us out of this. For months people have been talking about the disconnect between the economy and stock prices. Now it's starting to seem like that disconnect is narrowing.

All these earnings look pretty good. But after the huge stock run last year and the expectation of the good earnings, I think you're seeing a bit of that old 'sell the news' reaction.

Earnings are not so great and we've got all these things we can't control, from military action in Afghanistan to the anthrax scare, so people are doing a little selling.

The market may be overreacting to stock news that really isn't so terrible. For some reason, Home Depot's news is being seen as really negative.

Where's the motivation to drive stocks higher. I thought that we could have done better, but there was no real motivation to move things higher or lower.

There are a lot of positives -- Intel said some good things Greenspan is saying that oil prices are a wild card, which we knew already, but that inflation is under control. But we're mixed, bouncing around today (Wednesday). You've got big names coming out in the next day and you need some of these giants to say tech is improving.

I'm happy that things are going up in the markets but when things get too bullish and too, I don't know if they're exuberant, but too optimistic, someone will find something between the lines on the Fed statement saying, 'but they said this, they cautioned here', maybe to have to be vigilant, so people might use that as an excuse to stay profits.

We're drifting, and we're probably going to keep drifting for the next few weeks. But that's OK, there are positive developments out there. Oil prices seem to be under control, and I'm more encouraged about the second-quarter earnings than I have been in a while.

The market seems like it wants to go higher. People are looking beyond the valley.

Decent economic news is being ignored. The market seems to be paralyzed by Iraq and terrorism -- it's just a mess. In another time, the economic numbers might have caused a rally or some kind of stability.

I don't see that there's any motivation to move higher. The concerns about interest rates, oil prices and Iraq aren't going away. I think we're going to stay in a volatile range. The best we can hope for is the market to move sideways for a while.

The main thing is how this tragedy is going to impact the economy, and obviously it's negative.

Gold is at a high and the dollar weakened again. As a result, you would think stocks would be a lot lower today, with people putting money into those areas and taking money out of stocks, but they're not that bad. We're kind of just drifting. The Dow has its own company-specific problems, but the Nasdaq is hanging in there.

I'm not so sure that the rally was commensurate with the news out of the Fed. They seemed to say that they're going to keep rates low for a long time, which wasn't a surprise, but maybe people felt better seeing it spelled out more clearly.

This is where the earnings growth is. This is where people perceive the opportunities are to make money.

The reports after the bell looked pretty good, including Texas Instruments, and that should probably help the techs tomorrow.

It's really impressive. It just keeps going, regardless of what the news is. If there is any pullback, it's going to be minor.

Maybe Exxon will go up a little bit today because they beat the earnings but remember, the stock has dropped 7 points in the last couple of weeks. So I would say this is really not a very dynamic investment. People like it and get a little dividend. You are really wasting your time with these stocks because you invest money in them and in two years, you have the same price as you had from the time you invested. So you really, in a sense, lose money by owning these stocks.

Some of the blue chip tech stocks, especially the Internet stocks, as we all know, have really taken it on the chin this year. So if you want to play the technology sector, you should stay with the ones that did not make warnings going forward, as did the Amazon or Nokia, so stay with those.

I would say in the next few weeks we can kind of grind in place, maybe a little to the upside. Maybe we'll get through the pre-announcement period without too much trouble, and then we'll get into third-quarter earnings in October, and they should be mostly in line.

The market looks ahead, and maybe investors are worried that between the higher interest rate picture and the decelerating profit growth, the market may have a tough time advancing.

Blair is trying to put people's perspective in the right place. Maybe they expected too much in the first week. He's saying that we are making progress and we are going to try and work with the U.N., and that reassures people.

We have a lot of factors at play here. It's an accumulation of all the negative economic news this week, capped off by the jobless data this morning, bond yields declining so sharply, and the weak forecasts out of companies. But what really accelerated the selling was the note out of Goldman Sachs about the Fed.

Didn't look like we were going to do much in the beginning because the jobs number came in lower-than-expected and the Michigan number also came in lower.

The closer we get to the end of the year, the more we get into that seasonally favorable time frame.

The market has a lot of headwinds it's up against, yet it's still hanging in there.

People are frustrated. The pattern has been a couple of days of rallies on a little good news and then it fizzles out. There's no reason to make big commitments with all of this unresolved. The hope now is that we can dig in our heels at key support levels and find some balance.

I just think we can't seem to get out of that range we're in. We're in a seasonally difficult time of the year. All the good news is in the market ... it needs a new catalyst.

It's such a knee-jerk reaction. I don't think that what the Fed said justifies the kind of reaction we saw. I would like to think that we could rally back after the certification is completed tomorrow, but I don't know. I am just stunned by the extent of this decline. Hopefully, it was a one-time reaction.