Tom Shrader Quotations

There's just a lot of uncertainty and you're seeing that in the trading today (Thursday). Tomorrow's (Friday) our only big economic day of the week. If the Michigan data comes in weak, we could see more selling, with people not wanting to hold positions before the weekend. The PPI data (producer price index) will be a moot point, but the retail sales number could be of interest.

We're up 15 or 20 percent off our (July 24) lows. But September is a tricky month historically. We could retest recent lows by as much as 10 percent before we're able to really move higher.

I think the rise in the price of gold and gold stocks is certainly a reflection of the uncertainty today (Thursday), as those stocks tend to do well when people are nervous.

People were fairly attuned to Greenspan this morning, but I don't think anything he said had an impact one way or the other, and the tape almost stopped when Bush was speaking -- there was nothing surprising there. It's fairly quiet. I think we're suffering post-9/11 anniversary boredom.