Many market observers are coming out with the belief that the market will break upward after the election. Such strong consensus views often don't turn out to be a reality.
It seems the storm is not going to be as strong as we feared and that was enough to take some of the selling pressure off stocks today. We are not likely to see real stock-buying this afternoon as most investors still want to see what happens with the storm during the weekend, but if damage is minimal, we might be bound for a rally on Monday.
Overnight, you saw good news coming out of the tech sector and we suspect they are good harbingers of things to come out of the earnings season for the next couple of weeks.
Big institutions are holding back their own capital. They're looking for an upside catalyst for stock prices. Any activity on the mergers and acquisition, buy-back or dividend fronts, mixed with good news out of energy or the Fed, would be a catalyst to bring the big institutions back into stock market.
Retailers came out with pretty good reports. One would think we'll see a pretty good retail sales number, and that would give support to the market, absent much higher core inflation numbers.
The trading and the underwriting activity looks favorable.
Earnings are driving the testing of the top end for the S&P 500, but geopolitical issues are here to stay for some time. That will put downward pressure on the stock market.
Energy is going to catch the attention of the market. It's probably a force that's not going to leave because we're in transition from concern about oil to concerns about natural gas and how that will affect consumer spending as we head into winter.
What we think occurred is that analysts became too euphoric about earnings expectations at some targeted companies and, unfortunately, they were the first ones to report.
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