“Technology has been under a bit of a cloud and there's still concerns about the telecom industry, ... I think investors are still very wary of it. They want to see more robust capital expenditure.”
“Investors have a long memory -- in those cases where we've had major oil shocks, overall demand has dried up, ... People are looking towards and fearing a slow-growth, inflationary environment -- stagflation.”
“The oil prices are creating a few problems, ... Prices are impacting the PPI report and also consumer prices and are also hurting our trade balance, what with the weaker dollar, because we have to pay more to import oil. However, there aren't a lot of inflationary pressures here beyond that.”
“I was very impressed with the last couple days' performance, in particular with the Dow, which rallied nicely, ... But we're in this pre-announcement period and although there haven't been too many negative comments, there's some hesitation on the part of investors because of that.”
“The weakness today doesn't concern me, ... There's a little profit taking after the five up sessions and there's some jitters over the dollar's decline, but I think it's pretty clear that the earnings are going to be quite good.”
“[But after three days of selling,] I think tomorrow should be a fairly positive open, with the techs a little higher on Microsoft and in response to the action over the last few days, ... We've had a couple of ugly sessions and you're likely to see a little bounce off of that.”
“We like auto parts and accessories; we even like Pep Boys. They have a return on equity similar to AutoZone, which has a return on equity somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 percent,”
“I like AutoZone because it's got a rate of return on equity, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 percent, ... It's got a great franchise. As the auto stocks get older and retail sales for autos are off a little bit, it means that the stock will get older and you have to repair your cars. And they're getting into the diagnostic lines, which helped.”
“I kind of like consumer non-durables, (they are) all expected to earn 20 to 25 percent or better this fiscal year, ... They have good returns on equity, 15 percent plus. And I think they're priced appropriately within their price-to-earnings multiples.”
“I think for the shareholders overall it would be great if they could be moved into Alcatel, ... At least they would come up with a premium price that Alcatel would pay. It would be good for the shareholders, but the question is, will it actually happen?”
