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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (18054)	12/22/2002 1:11:03 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57110

if you look at the chart of the dow, after all the volatility we're right about where we were around the beginning of september. news.yahoo.com You Better Not Cry: Santa Rally Unlikely Sun Dec 22, 8:00 AM ET Add Business - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Vivian Chu NEW YORK (Reuters) - After three straight years of declines, Wall Street needs a Santa Claus rally more than ever. Many investors say that a traditional stock market rally that occurs just before Christmas and continues into the new year is not in the cards this year. If that's true, then beware the bear. "If Santa Claus fails to call, the bears may come to Broad and Wall," said Jeffrey Hirsch, editor of the Stock Traders Almanac, referring to the lower Manhattan intersection where the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) is located. "That means if there's no Santa Claus rally, it could be the first warning sign of a bear market." Santa Claus tends to visit Wall Street almost every year, bringing a short but respectable rally in the last five days of the year and the first two in January, said Hirsch. The so-called "Santa Claus rally" has been good for an average 1.7 percent gain since 1969, or 1.5 percent since 1950. Many investors, though, doubt that such a rally will occur this year. "I don't think we'll see a Santa Claus rally," said Joseph Kalinowski, chief investment officer at Ehrenkrantz King Nussbaum Inc. "Analysts are expecting anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent earnings growth for the S&P in the fourth quarter, which I think is too optimistic," Kalinowski said, adding that he believes companies will revise their earnings projections lower in the coming weeks. In the past week, major indices eked out modest gains. The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI - news) is up 0.93 percent, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^SPX - news) is up 0.72 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index (^IXIC - news) is up 0.1 percent. Trading volume is usually anemic in the last week of December, and this year it could be even lighter than normal due to the timing of the holidays. This year, Christmas and New Year's fall on Wednesday, smack in the middle of the week.