John Augustine Quotations

The stock market has an opportunity to break upwards if corporate CEOs and CFOs say some good things, or at least some neutral things, about the outlook,

The stock market certainly got what it wanted in a lower-than-expected jobs report. If the Fed moves to the sideline and energy prices stabilize, those will be two headwinds out of the way for the stock market in 2006.

It seems the storm is not going to be as strong as we feared and that was enough to take some of the selling pressure off stocks today. We are not likely to see real stock-buying this afternoon as most investors still want to see what happens with the storm during the weekend, but if damage is minimal, we might be bound for a rally on Monday.

Overnight, you saw good news coming out of the tech sector and we suspect they are good harbingers of things to come out of the earnings season for the next couple of weeks.

Retailers came out with pretty good reports. One would think we'll see a pretty good retail sales number, and that would give support to the market, absent much higher core inflation numbers.

Just as the brokerages are often a harbinger for things to come in the financial sector, the exchanges will probably fit into that equation of forward- looking financial sector indicators, and they'll revolve around the volume trends.

The trading and the underwriting activity looks favorable.

What we think occurred is that analysts became too euphoric about earnings expectations at some targeted companies and, unfortunately, they were the first ones to report.

There are fears that any supply disruptions could disturb oil markets and such concerns are holding back both economic growth and stock prices. In the absence of any such disruptions, we expect that crude will stay in the $50-$70 range this year and will likely always be on investors' minds.

So far financial markets like what they're hearing from the chairman.