Sam Stovall Quotations

It's an industry that does not experience a change in demand whether the economy is expanding or contracting, or whether the market is rising or falling. When you die, you die. The only difference could be the families of the one who passed away, if times are tough, could opt for a less expensive funeral.

If you were to buy those industries that in the prior 12 months had beaten the S&P 500, if you had purchased those, held them for another 12 months, you indeed over the past 10 years would have beaten the market seven of those 10 times.

I would regard today as positive, although we're clearly not out of the woods yet.

The market has been in an irritable mood. If earnings and guidance are good, and there are no reasons to sell, then things should work out OK.

Possibly we could see a little bit of profit taking because investors had been anticipating that when the Fed does meet next week that they won't raise interest rates,

Basically the top ten industries were those that are economically sensitive and are bouncing back from their deeply oversold condition last year as a result of lower interest rates. We do believe the Fed will remain aggressive with its easing interest rate policy but we feel the earnings are going to be pretty bad for the first quarter, so the market is likely to tread water for awhile.

The feeling is the worst is probably over for tech,

In general, we are seeing things that look a lot better.

Increased volatility can certainly cause increase tension, but that's not a reason to step out. It is certainly white-knuckle time, but that does not necessarily mean the good run has ended.

There's a lot more uncertainty now, ... And we've had 18 months of price advances -- that could just be setting us up for a renewal of the defensiveness the market goes through during the May-Oct. period.