Rick Hutcheon Quotations

We're absolutely in wait-and-see mode and if he doesn't cut tomorrow, hang on to your hats because we're going down big time.

My guess is the action of the Fed was pretty much discounted by the market already.

Now you've got the herd mentality rushing to the fore. This whole thing is nothing more than a reality check: it's a warning shot across the bow of the tech sector. The day traders and the tech-heavy investors, I think, are a little scared right now.

I would characterize this as a profit-taking session.

We're in the process of grinding out a bit of a bottom here. But it's a rotational market and the guys that are playing the last cycle by running in and buying the techs and so forth are ultimately going to be disappointed.

I would think that that stock would be held in a lot of index-type accounts that probably can't own a lot more American paper than they already do.

We're up today because of the Iran (tensions) and therefore the price of gold and oil is driving our market. It's the natural resource complex that is once again driving the Canadian market.

We're out of RRSP season now and that's going to dry up a lot of flows.

We've had a market that's been extraordinarily strong. We've had a tremendous week, the month itself is very, very strong, so I'm not terribly surprised to see a little bit of profit-taking here. Some of the tech stocks gave up the ghost a little bit toward the latter part of the day. Bell and Nortel kept us up today.

Concentration on economic numbers and data is going to be intense for the next little while.

It was very narrow, it was very focused and very dangerous. It was a rally that was built on very modest underpinnings. You knock out any one of those legs and you're in trouble.

Tech stocks are under great selling pressure. A quarter end is coming up and fund managers are probably trimming their positions in the technology sector simply because they don't want to show big tech weights at the end of their reporting period.

People had themselves worked into state of expectation that the Fed was going you go 75 basis points and maybe even 100 and the fact that they only went 50 points (one-half percentage point) has obviously not been well received.

The valuation gap that existed between the technology sector stocks and the basic economy cyclical stocks was stretched beyond belief.

It seems to be a situation where nobody really wants to do very much of anything, partly because of uncertainty of what could transpire in Iraq. Managers are chewing their fingernails a little bit about what the third quarter pre-announcements are going to look like over the next few weeks.

It's all CP today. There's a nice little gift for the folks that own CP. Unlock some of the conglomerate discounted value in those things.

It's been quite a bizarre market. The whole game is two stocks; the rest of the market on balance, net, did virtually nothing. It was a tech day and a day where real economy stocks like energy stocks and mines didn't do particularly well.

The banks had some great moves last week and so we're just seeing a little bit of consolidation.

This is indicative of a market that's really degenerated into a show-me situation. But if earnings turn out to be OK, then maybe the market can build on itself and stage a rally because it's certainly due for a bounce.

In all likelihood, the Fed will act at the end of this month.

Investors are going to take microscopes to these numbers, try to get behind them and try to pre-guess what the Fed is likely to do.

I guess the sentiment picture that we've had in the last couple of weeks has been sufficiently negative to more or less push everyone to the sidelines. There's not a lot of volume in the markets. People are really sitting on their hands waiting to see what's going to happen tomorrow and Wednesday when the FOMC meets.

The damage to investor psychology is pretty severe and it takes a while to overcome that. But there is a lot of evidence of panicky selling, which one can only hope is indicative of a market trying to find its footing.

The great stocks, they're reporting wonderful earnings, but can it get better from here? The stocks are starting to get to a level where lots of positive expectations are already priced in.