Douglas Altabef Quotations

It's always been a high-multiple stock among the retailers based on the reality of terrific business performance. Wal-Mart has many times in the last 15 years been a lousy investment possibility because it's priced so high. Our thinking is they've got to always be right.

Clearly you're seeing conflicting signs about the economy and the market reacting to that.

But I think the way the market is acting is actually healthy. You're seeing a real resilience on the part of the market. You're seeing a willingness to shrug off or contextualize not great news, which is a big improvement over June and July, when if the market was open, it was down.

We're seeing the reality of a market that does not have any great conviction. Anyone who expected a linear, 'We're off to the races' kind of tone after last week was mistaken.

We're looking at the first day of the rest of the year and it's looking like more of the same. On an up note, there is more discussion that maybe we have worked through some of the intense negativity of late and that the disconnect between the economic data and market action may end soon.

I think there are a couple trends worth paying attention to. Number one is the re-emergence of financials. We've seen that already over the last few months. They've had a tremendous run but they're coming off such a lousy last year-and-a-half that I think it's fair to say that it hasn't really left the station. But there's a lot of whistle blowing going on. The other one is that investors are very nervous about any kind of whiff of disappointment of not meeting expectations, so there is tremendous short-term volatility going on, and that's a buying opportunity.

O'Neal has a good sense of where the business focus should be. He's been able to take advantage of a good business environment.

Ostensibly, the advance was caused by oil coming down and some of the comments with the beige book.

Profit news continues to be good, and we are seeing some relief from the profit taking of the last few weeks. But there is an ongoing tug-of-war between 'we've come too far too fast,' and 'the economic recovery is strong' and you're seeing that played out on a day-to-day basis.

Three years ago people actually thought that the Dow could go to 36,000 and it did the opposite. It's when people have really given up on the prospect of a real rally that you see a real rally, but try telling that to most investors now. Three years ago there was no reality dose, today there's no perspective.