It looks like Briefing.com is now officially bearish:
Today's Briefing.com commentary.
Markets: briefing.com
Excerpts:
<<The main story will be the emerging earnings crisis. That the latter is partially an outgrowth of the former doesn't matter. What does matter is that investors are ignoring the warning signs of this crisis just as they did with the Asian crisis when the Indonesian, Malaysian and the Philippine currencies were under fire. In the past three weeks alone over 40 companies have warned of, or reported, disappointing sales/earnings growth. If it were one sector such as technology or energy exhibiting weakness, maybe the slowdown could be explained away as sector specific. But the warnings/disappointing reports have come from a diverse group of companies. Included on the list are Nike, 3M, JP Morgan, Oracle, Anchor Gaming, Oxford Health, Briggs & Stratton, FSI International, Tenneco, Western Digital (several times), Suburban Lodges and Microsoft. This does not include companies which warned earlier such as Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble (the latter recently set a new 52-wk high).>>
Re. Techs: briefing.com
Excerpts:
<<All of a sudden, the tone in the tech sector has changed... Fears of a protracted decline due to the deepening financial crisis in Asia and slowing earnings growth, have given way to the belief that the worst is behind the sector... As such it's time to snap up some bargains... What nonsense... Was the sector oversold from a short-term perspective at Friday's lows?... Sure... Could we continue to see some modest additional gains between now and year-end... Also, yes... But do the gains represent anything more than a corrective bounce?... Not likely... Why?
Underlying technicals remain weak with bearish chart configurations dominating the landscape of every industry.
No leadership... The leaders in each of the major tech groups have broken down...
Note Seagate, Compaq, Dell, Oracle, Microsoft, Intel, Texas Instruments, 3Com,
Applied Materials and Northern Telecom.
Earnings growth expected to slow due to weakening demand in Asia.
Domestic growth also put into question by news out of Oracle, 3M and Cabletron.
PC sales expected to slow.
Capital spending by corporate America could slow if U.S. economy dragged down by Asian contagion.
Valuations remain high (in general).
In other words, buyer beware.>> |
