Anthony Chan Ark Quotations

Yes, the economy was slow and would have come within a hair's distance of a recession. But Sept. 11 was the fatal blow to the economy this year. That probably will be the most important market and economic event of the year.

The housing market is resilient, still going strong, but it would be a mistake to ignore the weakness in existing sales and assume everything is copasetic.

The housing market doesn't surprise me; it's been rising all along and enabled the economy to experience only a mild recession.

I think the markets probably overreacted when the Federal Reserve first moved toward a neutral operating directive. When Alan Greenspan spoke this time, I think the reality set in and that is, yes, the central bank has a neutral directive, but it's more like an ultra-right (hawkish) form of neutral directive. ... Any time they get an excuse to raise rates, they're going to take it.

I think that if the Fed goes back to normal language about 'measured pace' (of rate hikes), it becomes a secondary story, ... It is only becoming a big story because of the uncertainty about what they were going to do. The equity markets will be looking for language here again. If it talks too harshly about inflationary pressures, it could be unfriendly for stocks.

The market doesn't want to see too much exuberance on the part of consumers in order to keep the central bank at bay.

This is clearly a non-threatening report for investors and policy makers alike. Labor market conditions appear to be tepid enough to justify less rather than more Fed rate hikes while wage pressures did not spoil the party.

With this figure, markets can remain all but assured that the Fed will continue to push short term rates higher well into 2006.

Several times in the last year we've seen mortgage rates creeping up and housing hasn't responded. Now the Federal Reserve has put some credibility behind the increase in rates. I think it set a general tone for the housing market that it'll be a lot more muted.

There's no question that what's happening in the stock market is going to hurt consumer spending. The only thing helping us is the performance of housing.

There's no question in my mind that the labor market is improving.

I think the risk is the downside, not the upside, ... I think the markets are fairly nervous about the prospects for growth. They're going to be dissecting the number. If we have slower than expected consumer spending and stronger than expected inventory growth, that's not going to bode well for the next quarter or so.

For the moment, the market is celebrating because the announcement removes uncertainty.

I believe that it is safe to say that this report understates the true strength of current labor market conditions.

The stock market didn't want the economy to grow too quickly because they were worried about aggressive rate hikes, ... They wanted the Goldilocks approach where everything was just right. But now they realize that maybe the porridge is a bit too cold for their taste.

Although the gain in real GDP came in somewhat below market expectations, the details of the report were much more favorable,

Although the current growth environment is not impressive, positive growth is still positive growth. On the darker side of things, however, we must admit that the economy still lacks the growth momentum needed to correct many of the labor market ailments.

Although it's not particularly good news for the housing market, the fact that you're seeing weakness here shows that monetary policy is working and the (Fed) would not have to blunt the economy with more hikes than the market has been anticipating.

The bottom line is, the labor market is going to continue to show further deterioration, not because it's getting worse, but because of mechanics. As the unemployment rate gets higher, the consumer is going to consider that.

The two months of favorable data allow us to start connecting the dots. It gives us a picture of a rapidly improving labor market. I think we can categorically say we have seen a sea change in labor market environment at this time.

These figures strongly suggest that the labor market recovery train is still not even at the train station as of yet.

Usually the devil is in the details. With this report, the greatest fear is that details of true labor market conditions will be found over the next couple of months instead of in this report.

As the equity markets react positively to this change, we get a bit of a positive wealth effect which in turn should induce higher consumer spending.

Investors have become completely convinced that we need to see the housing canary buckle under a little bit. If the housing market softens, then investors will view that as the canary in the cave that indicates that central bankers will not have to be as aggressive.

The equity market wants someone who controls inflation, but not to the point where they go overboard.

The equity market has quite a considerable number of dark clouds hovering over it.

The primary catalyst in the market remains energy, it continues to rule the day. But then we saw that energy prices started to go up, and that took some of the luster off the gains.

We've seen a sea change in the way the financial markets and economy watchers are looking at the world, ... For many months, people thought the economy was so strong and robust, they could ignore these head winds.

The new-home sales market is the canary in the coal mine. Builders have a better clue as to what the right price is to move a house.

Real new home sale prices and existing-home sale prices have been rising very sharply. When that starts to give way and we don't have the equity market picking up where housing left off, that's another reason the economic expansion will be gradual.

We still have a labor market that's deteriorating, and today's numbers epitomize that. We're going to continue to see deterioration, which will pose serious challenges to consumer confidence and keep the economy soft for another quarter or two.

This report was very encouraging. It gives us stronger employment growth than the market was expecting while none of negative side effects of economic growth are present, such as higher inflationary pressure from wages.

This report is good news because it says the labor market is turning the corner, but it's still not strong enough to declare victory.

This report is actually quite favorable for financial markets since we see very little inflation pressure while simultaneously seeing job creation inching up,

The small improvement in labor market conditions, despite the continued risks that remain on this front, do suggest that even with all the caveats that Greenspan echoed in his latest testimony ... the Fed might be inclined to move towards a neutral risk bias.

Oil prices have not been a positive for the equity market with the potential for rising inflation.

These numbers confirm the notion that consumer spending, which has been so resilient, is under some threat. With investor sentiment so weak and the labor market continuing to deteriorate, consumer confidence had only one way to go -- lower.

International investing offers the opportunity for diversification. What you want in a diverse portfolio is the ability to have some markets move differently from other markets. You get a much higher rate of return with lower risk.

The rise in the unemployment rate takes much of the sting away from the robust gain in payrolls from a monetary policy perspective. The big fear ahead of the release of this report was that labor markets were overheating.

With the rise in the unemployment rate, it is hard to conclude that the labor market is anywhere near out of the woods.

Since the beginning of this year, the economy has been recovering gradually....In that environment, a gradually rising stock market would be justified. Instead we got a sharp decline. Can we justify this rally? Absolutely....But we can't justify a thousand-point increase every week.

It really tells us the economy is healthy, and at the same time we don't see that labor markets are overheating at an accelerating pace.

This clearly shows that relying on the household survey's employment measure as a barometer of labor market conditions is not only risky, but also an incorrect assumption,

The labor market seems to be improving, but still at such slow pace, it's probably too early to start celebrating.

When we exclude the effects of the recent hurricanes, we have to come away with the conclusion that despite higher energy prices and a battery of hurricanes, the job market is not doing all that bad.

We can't ignore the trend -- jobless claims have been coming down. We're at least close to turning the corner on the labor market front.

We will eventually see the negative impact of rising rates -- we can't dodge that bullet -- but doesn't usually happen at the beginning of the cycle. I'm not sure we will continue to see the market beating expectations by these margins, but I don't see the market collapsing in the next month or so.

He not only was articulate in his views, but justified his views without making financial markets balk. He was impressive, maybe not as impressive as Greenspan, but Greenspan had 18 years to practice.

One of the pillars of strength of the housing market is the fact of the tax-advantaged nature of the asset. To the extent that you chip away at that, you would see housing somewhat negatively impacted.

By telling us that the risks are more heavily weighed towards weakness while simultaneously stating that they expect an economic recovery within the next several calendar quarters, they are revealing that they remain willing to act if they need to while also reassuring financial markets that there is no need for panic over the near term.

More rate cuts may not be forthcoming, but the Fed is also not likely to start raising rates as quickly as financial markets expect.

It's going to make the markets a bit jittery, especially when the market is conditioned to be data-dependent.

I think the big jump in Japan gives a nice tail wind to the equity markets this morning.

Even though we are close to the peak and we are still going to see spurts in activity, we will eventually see the housing market slow.

Even though I don't think one number is going to change the Federal Reserve's mind, the markets react to data as it comes out and these numbers were not inflation friendly.

One month doesn't make a story. But it's certainly very encouraging, especially with the market worried about inflation.

Today's Fed rate cut and directive clearly reflects the fact that the Fed is coming to the end of its rainbow and therefore wants to ensure that it still can convince financial markets that it still has further flexibility to do more if it needs to.

The job market is going to get worse -- this is a jobless recovery.

I think this is an important first step for the central bank. They didn't want to lower rates too aggressively for fear of sending a signal to the markets that they thought things were completely falling apart.

The movement in labor market conditions is a lot more important than the movement in energy prices. Only when labor market conditions are deteriorating have we historically seen that energy prices have an impact.

This is a sign that the housing market is not exempt from the laws of gravity,

This shows the labor market in not overheated. And you can see that in, yes, not a lot of people are getting raises.

The bidding fever that was present a year or so ago has all but disappeared, and that's another sign that this market is slowing.

The best way to describe this report is 'holy cow,' ... This is a great report. We have Alan Greenspan a little bit worried about inflation and certainly the financial markets will realize that those worries certainly continue to prove to be unfounded.