Overall market commentary: Despite the recent run-up, overall market conditions are excellent....tech companies earnings great, cyclicals not so....Q3 is forecast to be also great for techs....growth is slowing to 2-2.5% in the economy (witness recent trade deficit, consumer confidence weakening (admittedly slight, but weakening), Brazil/Argentina/Chile much weaker than everyone thought..recovery lame...Europe growth not very exciting.....Japan is a false start....(watch Nikkei settle back to 16,000, then probably buy)...only place where growth really picking up, Asia (ex-Japan)...Korea GDP 6% growth, etc...
What % does Asia (ex-Japan) have to do with (overall) U.S. economy? Not a helluva whole lot...Therefore, any inflationary impact is muted by its small %....
Commodities? Still dead. Oil? Low 20's (21, 22) probably limit...oil affects much smaller % of economy than 70's....$20 no big deal...
And the incredible de-flationary impact of technology and the Net are going to last for years to come!
Furthermore, Greenspan can not raise rates because of weakness in Latin America, Japan....Raise by Fed would force Eurobankers to raise too...they certainly dont want to do that! Euro remains weak, could bounce a little....but will hold near parity...
Fund managers starting to favor (again) big caps...Y2K turning out (so far) to not be that big a deal (one quarter phenom at worst)...
** The ONLY thing, really, prevents a big-cap, tech rally here is history.....late July-early October period historically bad for the group....big gains for many investors so far this year...some may take some chips off the table....Big fund managers are aware of this trend for sure...
That would be a shame (if they do). It doesn't get much better than this!
Still think we've got some nice upside (Dell) to go. When 2000 (September? October?) comes on the investing horizon, look out..
Greenspan a non-event tomorrow. He won't say anything damaging. He knows growth is slowing.....No rate hikes 'til next year....
Now, .18 would be real nice. Hope Mikey can surprise us (and the markets)...could keep us above 45 with an .18 EPS.... |
