James Awad News Quotations

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.

Today is encouraging, but it's not particularly meaningful. We still have a lot of economic and earnings news to get through this week.

I think you're locked in a trading range. The good news is, the consensus for now seems to be that if the Fed's done -- if it's not done, it's very close to being done -- so that relieves the interest rate pressures from the market. And you've ended the negative pre-announcement season. You're going into the regular announcement season, and earnings should be pretty good. And that should support the market,

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.

The Fed officials are talking very optimistically. Uniformly they were out there, on the tape yesterday and in interviews, saying that they are expecting a second-half recovery and looking for signs of a bottom sometime, very soon in the economy. So, you are going to have to watch the news very carefully going forward. I don't think anybody really knows. But if you listen to the Fed, you have maybe one more rate cut and then an improving economy.