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Technology Stocks : JDS Uniphase (JDSU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: t2 who wrote (19562)	3/19/2001 6:59:55 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 24042

SmartMoney.com - Weekend Report Fed Rescue? Don't Count on It By Igor Greenwald THIS BEAR MARKET will have found its bottom when: a) Abby Joseph Cohen stops insisting that stocks are undervalued b) A couple of online brokers go offline and off a ledge c) The Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by another half of a percentage point on Tuesday and investors run for the exits because they'd worked themselves up to expect even more. The answer is probably A. But don't count on the Goldman Sachs strategist to repent this week just because she's been wrongly forecasting a market rebound all year. Abby's been arguing that the Fed's rate-cutting should have already produced a rally on Wall Street. But while Alan Greenspan and Co. will most certainly lower rates again on Tuesday, it's unlikely the market will greet the news with much enthusiasm. The Street is evenly divided on what the Federal Open Market Committee will do. A Friday afternoon survey of primary bond dealers by Dow Jones Newswires found half expecting a cut of half a percentage point, while the rest held out for a three-quarters-of-a-point easing. That's because no one really pretends to know what's going on with the economy — Friday's surprisingly perky reading of consumer confidence was offset by drooping industrial production figures. The one thing most investors do seem convinced of is that Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan is not being aggressive enough in pumping up the money supply. So unless the FMOC comes through with the more generous cut, don't expect much positive sentiment. And maybe not even then. While optimists have taken heart from the markets' response to past Fed easing campaigns, pessimists worry that history doesn't always repeat itself. It might have been a coincidence, but the leading proponent of this argument, Morgan Stanley economist Stephen S. Roach, issued another gloomy note at the very outset of this week's slide. ``This is the first recession of the Information Age and the first modern-day contraction in an era of globalization; as a result, both the speed and cross-border implications of cyclical adjustments are in uncharted territory,'' he wrote. For a fuller discussion of this theory, click here. A year ago, the bulls were the ones discounting past precedents as they forecast prosperity without end. Now, with just two recessions to draw on from the past 20 years, the stampede is on to calculate the longevity of past bear markets and the height of the subsequent rebounds. Meanwhile, some high-profile tech bosses have been sounding fashionably bearish of late. First, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN - news) Chief Executive Jeff Bezos tells investors that ``we are not a stock you can sleep well with at night.'' (He should be getting plenty of rest after unloading 800,000 shares in February.) Then Siebel Systems (NASDAQ:SEBL - news) founder Thomas Siebel offers up this reassuring line at an Internet trade show: ``We will get through this. Have we seen the bottom of the technology market? We are not near it. When we have abject panic [we will be there].'' Abject panics: Plenty of historical precedents for those. Earnings reports will be mercifully scarce next week, with a quartet of Wall Street investment banks headlining for a sorry bunch. And if there's one thing that Stephen Roach and Abby Cohen can agree on, it's that the firms signing their paychecks aren't doing nearly as well as they were last year. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS - news) leads off on Tuesday, followed by Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH - news) and Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC - news) on Wednesday and Morgan ``Drop the Dean Witter part'' Stanley (NYSE:MWD - news) on Thursday. While the landslide in equity prices has silted up many of these firms' income streams, analysts say better times are just around the corner. How do they know this? Because the history of Federal Reserve rate cuts says so. Also struggling with this market are contract manufacturers Solectron (NYSE:SLR - news) and Jabil Circuit (NYSE:JBL - news); both stocks registered new 52-week lows this week. Solectron reports earnings Monday, followed the next day by Jabil. Also due next week: Nike (NYSE:NKE - news) on Tuesday, Fedex (NYSE:FDX - news) on Wednesday and 3COM (NASDAQ:COMS - news) also on Wednesday. In terms of potential to boost a sector, let alone the entire market, the Fed is pretty much on its own.