James Awad Market Quotations

The market was in La-La land the last few days. We had some good earnings yesterday and we got a positive spasm in response to it in a deeply oversold market.

The market needs to walk a line between too little growth and too much growth, between profits and interest rates. The jobs report tilted the market toward too little growth.

The market has done better than I would have thought. You've got some signs that the economy is starting to stabilize -- it looks like the consumer is counteracting the negative effects of the capital spending slowdown in technology.

The market has done better than I would have thought, ... You've got some signs that the economy is starting to stabilize -- it looks like the consumer is counteracting the negative effects of the capital spending slowdown in technology.

I don't think the market can make a lot of headway until we get an idea of the depth and breadth of the profit recession.

The vulnerability is in individual stocks rather than in the market, ... Any company that misses its earnings is going to get brutally punished. The market has very low tolerance for companies that miss their earnings, and it goes back to the fact that everybody's paid on performance and it's difficult for people to have a long-term view.

The risk is we are staring down the barrel of negative pre-announcements, so the market has the potential to be disappointed short term.

The market doesn't like uncertainty, so it's going to try to figure this out. We could see investors using this opportunity to do some weeding of their portfolios,

I think it's unlikely that you'll get a bear market because the fundamentals are too good. On the other hand, you're not going to make new highs in the market as long as we have uncertainty in terms of interest rates,

It's been a 'no-brainer' momentum market where securities analysis isn't important, and now you have almost dangerous valuation levels on those stocks,

North Fork Bancorp stock is selling at about 20. We think its fair value would be about 30. But meanwhile, you're getting a 3 percent dividend yield and it's selling at 10 times earnings. Demographically, it's a very attractive area. So, your risk in buying North Fork is that you're a little bit early and the market doesn't care about value stocks for a while. And of course, in a period of rising rates, financial stocks don't do particularly well. But, ... if you buy it and put it away, you'll end up making 50 percent from current levels over a 12 to 18 month period.

When all is said and done, I think the market will sprint higher toward the end of the year. But it's going to take continued encouraging earnings and economic reports to move it along.

The tradeoff and struggle in the market is the power of good earnings and the strength of the economy against the fear of higher interest rates and rising oil prices,

The basic factors that caused the market to go down remain in place, and I think those worries are going to be with us for the next couple of months, ... certainly until we get third-quarter earnings reports, and maybe through the election.

The building blocks of a bear market are not there. It's a correction and it will probably go on for a little bit longer, but I think by the end of April the flood of good corporate earnings reports will overwhelm the negative sentiment that you are getting now.

The best time in the stock market is when interest rates are low and earnings are poised to grow.

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.

The best news is cresting right now, ... so it very well may be that we had a fabulous run in the market from March 2003 to January 2004, we've sort of marked time since then, and we'll roll over for the rest of the year until we get better visibility on 2005.

This market isn't going to turn around until investors see the whites of the eyes of a profit recovery, and you're not likely to see that until the fourth quarter.

This is the wakeup call. We're going to go through a test here where we're going to have a period of turbulence in the market as we report second-quarter earnings and get forward-looking guidance for the third quarter.

This is the wakeup call, ... We're going to go through a test here where we're going to have a period of turbulence in the market as we report second-quarter earnings and get forward-looking guidance for the third quarter.

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.

I don't think we'll get any big surprises in the economic news next week, ... What the market will be looking for are any clues that point to anything other than four percent GDP (gross domestic product) growth.

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,

Once the Russell 2000 starts to move because it is fundamentally more attractive, you'll see a lot of money chasing limited market capitalization stocks. You can get a very significant move in the Russell 2000 in a very short time and I would anticipate that happening starting very soon.

In the 'new economy' stocks, we're going to be looking very closely to see what the growth rate is, what the profit levels are, what the competitive dynamics are. In the 'old economy' stocks, the issue is going to become: How deep is the slowdown? Where does it end? And so people are going to be doing it stock by stock. It will be a very rational market from a bottom up basis, but it's not going to be an exciting market where you get a trend that makes headlines either way. So I think it'll frustrate both the bulls and the bears.