We're seeing better earnings, and that's making people more enthusiastic. But programs have been skewed to the buy side. To be honest, this is probably not sustainable.
There are a lot of bad things happening right now in the Bush White House. Obviously, leadership at the highest level is very important to investors feeling comfortable about making investment decisions. This is probably the darkest or the lowest point in the Bush presidency.
One of the things the market wants to see is that the Fed is finished raising interest rates.
If they are having a hard time getting paid by their customers, what does that say about the rest of the industry?
If it's down a lot (people are investing in it). Everyone says this can't be sustained, but that's what fuels the markets.
Historically, you can't have an up market without banks leading the way. Today it's an earnings rally again led by the banks.
Really there's no news that would account for the lift,
We had a pretty dramatic sell-off yesterday, so it's to be expected that you are going to get some type of 'dead cat' bounce in this market. GDP numbers are helping somewhat, but it was pretty much in line.
The question is, 'How long will it take to rebuild confidence?'
There are a lot of mixed signals right now. Some of the negative tone has to do with the fact that we're starting to see more human casualties. There's a weight on the market that this is getting really messy. People aren't used to this kind of war.
The president only has so much influence over the economy and legislation.
We've had some pretty good gains in a lot of sectors lately that need to be adjusted. The encouraging thing is we're not seeing a lot of volume, so there aren't a lot of sellers out there.
There's more of a mentality to buy on weakness.
It's two outs, bottom of the ninth -- he's gotta come through. He has to come up with something definite and substantial. Anything less than that will be taken as a negative by the market.
Everybody was expecting this hurricane to be one of biblical proportions and that oil prices were going to climb sharply. As the storm weakened, oil prices retreated and demand for stocks rebounded.
It seems AIG surprised everyone on the heels of news that Chubb reported a complicated quarter. The market doesn't want to hear any bad news right now, and it's giving people reason to sell.
If you have an unsound piece of wood, be it from moisture damage or just from excessive water laying up against the structure you want to take into account and start making notes and start looking into it.
This is like the perfect storm, with all these negative factors coming together at once.
The market's digesting the recent gains. Investors want to see what the market's going to do. Absent of big news, I don't think the market does anything but go sideways here.