Donald Selkin Economic Quotations

There's nothing much next week in terms of earnings, and not really hugely influential economic news, but the bias is still pretty positive, and I think we're likely to grind higher.

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.

I think the markets will overlook the weak economic reports. Everyone knows numbers in February and March were terrible due to the snow storms and oil prices.

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.

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.

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

If we show a build on the slight improvement in the labor market we've seen, if the economy continues to grow, there will be a decent November.

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.

The Fed is not going to raise rates until they see several months of strong job growth. And even if they do raise rates slightly, the rates will still be right near these historic lows. GDP this morning was not as strong as expected, but you had the other two economic reports that were good.

Today is very news driven. You've got GE, you've got HPQ, and the economic reports were a little better. It's the tech stocks that are leading the way. You're seeing a rotation out of the consumer stocks and into the techs.

You can build a case for an economic recovery, and you can build a case for earnings being much better in the second half of the year.

With earnings winding down and not as much to focus on, you're getting very volatile reactions to economic numbers that are actually pretty close to estimates. You're also seeing some of the defensive names that are dependent on an economic recovery trading lower.

Cyclical stocks should really not do well if the economy is going to slow, and you can see, look at the cyclical components of the Dow, a stock like International Paper, Du Pont, all at multi-year lows. I really don't see much there, I would avoid them.

The earnings have been tremendous. We are going to see a shift back to 'new economy' stocks because they are less rate sensitive.

We did OK for the first half of the month and then faded out -- a lot of the economic data in the last few weeks have been a little discouraging. It's kind of a sour way to end a good quarter but not too bad for the month.

I think the Fed meant to say something reassuring about the economy, but the result was very confusing.

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.