Alan Ackerman Drop Quotations

I think that the wide swings in the market created a lot of pain. We have a lot of walking wounded among portfolio holders. And many institutional types decided to purge problem stocks from their portfolios as a result of the drop we saw earlier in the week. We're really in a week this week that could go in either direction, and again those four variables, the four E's, could affect that.

With a market as nasty and negative as it is at the moment, there's little room for error. The Nasdaq has contracted very sharply in a short period of time. Its drop in a year is approximately 60 percent, but this is not representative of all companies that are publicly traded.