Barry Hyman Taking Quotations

The tame retail sales outlook helped the bond market. The market rewarded that with a very strong day. Financials and technology stocks righted themselves. We're on the cusp of taking out some important resistance levels.

Profit taking will be key words today (Thursday) and over the next couple of weeks. The Fed's rate cut yesterday bodes well for the longer term but near term it is an excuse to take profits. Cisco's story is another excuse to take profits in technology.

This is a time to be very diversified and avoid taking chances. Sometimes being a spectator is not a bad idea.

It is profit warnings and it's taking down more of the market than it probably should. The profit warnings are very specific to stocks that have not been performing well anyway.

This is a continuation of last week's decline and it's picking up in intensity. There is little rotation as we see the commodity complexes taking a huge hit. It looks worse than it actually is, but still it will require a lot of work technically to right the damage.

The dreaded whisper number -- that's Wall Street for you. This is day-to-day noise. Normal profit taking in the technology area can be considered to be 20 percent to 30 percent moves.