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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (17428)	2/13/1999 1:49:00 PM
From: Graeme Smith	Respond to of 18691

Roger, With respect I disagree about the market being driven higher from here. Technically the mean stock price across the board has been dropping for the last 5 weeks. This comes from the VectorVest price composite. I find this indicator useful since every stock in the universe has a roughly equal weighting. Hence Microsoft, AOL and Dell have no more affect on the composite than do a thouand small stocks. Once this composite starts dropping its usually a good indicator that a correction is about to take place, even if the large cap weighted indexes don't immediately show it. To me last thursday had very bearish undertones. Despite a record jump in the Nasdaq, almost as many stocks declined in price for the day as advanced. Volume was relatively low and I was incredibly surprised to see that for every new high hit on thursday there were about 10 new lows hit (I don't remember the exact figures). It is almost impossible to know the true direction of the market, but given the deteriorating technicals in the market, the fact that 9 of the last 10 days breadth was negative and fact that technology stocks had climbed 100% in the previous 3 months, I would say there is an 80% chance of the current correction continuing over at least the next few weeks. In another 2 or 3 months I wouldn't be surprised to see the markets hitting new highs once again. I agree with your feelings on the buy on the dip mentality out there. Graeme

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (17428)	2/15/1999 11:14:00 PM
From: Mark L.	Respond to of 18691

Roger and everyone else-- I'm trying to find on the Web something that Bloomberg has: analyst estimates for earnings on the S&P 500 index. While I don't ordinarily pay much heed to analyst estimates, the ones for the coming quarter (or soon-to-be-trailing 12 months) on the S&P have been pretty accurate--probably because the S&P earnings are updated quarterly, whereas the numbers for the individual companies are streaming in throughout the quarter. In essence, the analysts have actual numbers to work from. I use the current (i.e., trailing twelve months) S&P 500 P/E for certain portfolio allocation decisions. I've moved away from Bloomberg and would like to make the transition total. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.