Peter Greene Today Quotations

Lowe's was maybe a bit of a letdown this morning, and the other retailers and some of the homebuilding stocks are down. The Dow transportation average is also weak today, despite UAL's gains. There's really no new news today to push us too much in either direction. We've had a great run recently and a minor decline isn't so bad.

Today is a rotational shift into high tech and away from defensive sectors, which includes aerospace and defense.

The question is, how seriously do we take what's going on today, considering the volume, and what's going to happen next week when people come back? ... I would take today as a positive with the caveat that not many people are here.

This is impressive, but the caveat is that this is the day after a holiday and not many people are in. You also have certain key sectors, like chips and the insurers, not participating. I think you need to see a few more days of this to determine whether today is a head fake or not.

It's pretty mixed today (Friday) with light volume. The warning from Honeywell is very discouraging, as is the sentiment number, but then the retail sales number was fine, so that may be giving us a little buoyancy. We're also still worrying about Iraq.

The economic numbers were on balance disappointing. You also have the dollar a lot weaker today because of the continued uncertainty with the international situation.

What's happening today is very telling of where the market is right now. Typically, when there is negative news people tend to make 'flight-to-safety' moves into bonds and gold, but that isn't happening. That tells me that asset classes in the near term are very tired, and that we could see more of a pull back from here over the next few months.