The market was a little oversold. I think this (the run-up) is mostly technical. I don’t think you can read too much into it, since there weren’t a lot of drivers.

The consumer is losing the ability to defend his lifestyle, and that means eventually he’ll have to cut back on spending. Whether this will really come to a head in 2006 or 2007 is up...

Things have been very distorted by how warm the weather was in January. To some extent, we’re trying to get a handle on how it impacted the economy. It helped retail spending and housing starts,...

Earnings are the most likely catalyst in the short term. The market is very concerned about inflation and the consumer rolling over because of higher prices. If the outlooks call for strong fourth-quarter sales, then...

We’re just winding down the year, ending the year with these sort of small, middling gains, which to me makes sense because you’ve had opposing factors this year. On the one hand you’ve had good...

People are waiting to see what kind of change in policy language is going to accompany that statement. The question is, if the Fed is approaching (a neutral stance), how will its policy change in...

You’re having a little bit of digestion today. The Wal-Mart news is going to an issue that is concerning investors in 2006, which is namely the health of the consumer. Is consumer spending, which has...

It’s not going to have much significance for most market participants. Institutional investors tend to focus more on the S&P 500 and some of the other indexes.

The selling you’re seeing is nearly all on the tech side, and you’re seeing resilience in other parts of the market. This tells me that people aren’t panicking over Japan or anything else.

You have to ask yourself, if you sever the profitable part of a company from the part of the company that’s less profitable, what do you have left? To me, this is an area that...

The market in general is not anywhere near the peaks it hit during the end of the bubble.

There are still some significant headwinds out there, but I have to say, the market has held up pretty well. But … we’re still stuck in the same trading range we’ve seen for months, and...

Core inflation (excluding volatile energy and food prices) has stayed relatively contained.

The PPI number is one data point that suggests the Fed is going to go further.

I think, overall, we’re seeing some friendly economic data that helped the market out. That said, there’s not a lot of catalysts out there that could take us much higher, unless oil drops $5 a...

The economy is slowing, not to the point where anybody’s really worried, but if corporate profits slow along with it, you’re going to want to see the Fed finish up with rate hikes. But the...