James Awad Strong Quotations

There are a lot of reasons to worry about corporate earnings because of gasoline, oil, high commodity prices. It's almost like damned if you do, damned if you don't, because you're worried about what these commodities are doing to the economy, yet they're the strongest thing in the market.

The driving force for the market over coming weeks is going to be earnings -- what were the first quarter results and what is the outlook. You need strong earnings to overcome the headwinds of higher interest rates and inflation, because those aren't going away.

This is a low-cost way to play the eventual turnaround in technology, ... They're a very strong distributor of hardware and software products and it's gaining market share on its competitors. The stock is $25 on $2.35 of earnings and you're not taking product risk -- you're 11 times earnings on Tech Data for the company that's got a 20 percent long-term growth rate.

You would think that with oil so high, we would be seeing some pressure. But I think the strong read on factory orders turned things around, as it reassures people that the economy continues to strengthen.

I think retail is going to be a very tough place to make money. What's worrying the market now is -- if the Fed is successful in slowing the economy, what does it mean for profits going forward? And that is apparent - that's more clearly an issue in retail than anyplace else. But it is an issue in the market itself that you're going into a period here where profit growth may decelerate; in fact, could flatten out as you have volume gains decelerate in a slowing economy, but cost increases embedded in from the period when you had a strong economy; and that's not exactly a great prescription for profits, and I think that's troubling the stock market,