John Hughs Stocks Quotations

We're overbought, especially after yesterday, and there's talk that tomorrow's payroll number may disappoint, ... Yet stocks are hanging in.

What we're seeing is this kind off continuing correction in tech stocks that began a few weeks ago. The money is leaving tech and going to what we call value stocks.

We're getting to the year-end period and stocks are starting to drift. You're seeing that today, ... There's still a lot of uncertainty about the economy and about the change in Bush's economic team. We're also coming off a period where the Dow rose for 8 weeks and so you're seeing a little pullback. You saw it last week and I think it's continuing.

(Pride Petroleum) is not a household name. A lot of energy stocks have had pretty good moves of late, ... up around 15-to-20 percent. Pride is kind of a smaller player in the area, just kind of a stock that has a good technical pattern, a good chart, and is being dragged up by the rest of the group, and with higher energy prices we think that one can do better.

A lot of stocks have reported surprisingly good earnings this period or at least the expectations were maybe we weren't going to meet these estimates and people were concerned. But they have been performing a little bit better of late. Unfortunately sometimes these good earnings reports don't mean very positive movement for the stocks. Sometimes the stocks have run up in anticipation. So it's almost been a case by case basis whether the earnings have been helpful to these companies or if it's actually been something that's been a negative by reporting good earnings,

If you look at the market overall, you are in a negative place technically, ... The whole thing on the international front is kind of noise. It's a distraction from the fact that the economy is still choppy and that's why stocks aren't going anywhere. You almost want to get this whole geopolitical thing out of the way so stocks can just go down, which is where they would be without this, instead of just drifting.

It's a pretty good start to the year, ... You have a lot of small-cap, lower-priced stocks gaining, which is typical of January, but you also have gold, metals and a number of other sectors participating.