Brett Gallagher Quotations

We're going to see a lot of revisions down as we go on through the year. Expectations are high.

We're going to have to see better news and slow steady incremental gains over a prolonged period of time in order to build the market.

We're focusing more on the drillers and some producers. The services sector I think will follow along a little bit later Anadarko Petroleum is one of our favorites, ... This is a bit of a natural gas play. It's the one company in this sector that can increase their production should prices turn higher. Many others are limited by their ability to continue to pump out further amounts of product. I think Anadarko is vastly undervalued. To get another 30-to-50 percent out of the name over the course of the next 12-to-18 months would not surprise me at all.

We've seen more bad news than good news on the economic front over the last few weeks, but the market has been trading higher. Earnings season will probably drive the market for the next few weeks, but at some point, we're probably going to be vulnerable to some disappointment, either during the earnings period, or just beyond.

Some companies have a policy of currency hedging, and you have to factor that into the picture.

One positive is that S&P earnings so far have looked better than the year-earlier period. Granted, comparisons are a lot easier as companies take less write-offs, but it's still something that's encouraging. I don't think we're going to have a big profit recovery, but we'll have the appearance of improvement.

GE will probably talk up their numbers, but I don't know if I buy it.

From a technical standpoint the markets are a little oversold. There's tinder for the fire if the markets pick it up. Investors have to reconcile themselves that they're never going to find the bottom.

GAAP is the most honest measure of earnings, ... but the main problem with it is the cyclicality of it.

Had they won, the upside would be significantly greater than the downside we're seeing . . . .

Greed's keeping everybody in the game, ... It's getting very, very dangerous.

I think it's extremely important for U.S. investors to get this idea. It's slowly becoming more mainstream. As the world has become more global, it's more important to get best-in-class, and the only way you'll do that is to compare companies globally.

It continues to be a tug of war with all of the uncertainty going on with respect to the Middle East,

It is a little bounce and it's not to be unexpected given how much the markets sold off last week so I wouldn't read too much into this. Earnings are going to be very important to help set the tone, but the out quarters are still very much at risk and those estimates have not come down to the extent I think they should.

I think the market is just biding its time, and we're going to have these back-and-forth days.

I think that the IBM numbers in particular are going to be important. The chatter that I hear is that Microsoft should beat, but IBM is more mixed. So if IBM beats, that might drive the market higher.

I thought the reason for core earnings was to present a picture of what earnings from ongoing operations really look like. But because of this one factor, and because it's going to introduce so much volatility, nobody is going to use it.

Our general view is that the market is very overbought and will go down, but that could be delayed somewhat. In the very near term, I hesitate to bet against the market when you've got this much stimulus.

Longer term, is the war going to have a major impact on the direction of the market? I don't think so.

Today's earnings quality is less than in the past.

Yeah, we're cheaper than we were at the peak of the bubble and running up to the bubble. But compared to any other point the market is overvalued.

The quarter is starting off pretty rough. We're heading into earnings season and I don't think anyone is expecting anything good.

With pharmaceuticals, the problems are pretty well known. I don't think they're going to get any worse from here.

We seem to be certainly playing to the ebb and flow of the news on the Middle East. You had talk that the national security level would be raised and the market sold off immediately, then popped back up once it was dismissed. That's the kind of market we're in. It's rumor-driven, technical and the fundamentals are not playing a role.

To an extent we're in a vacuum where even poor economic statistics, such as the durable good orders, can't dissuade investors.

What I wonder is are we going to see follow-through selling after the initial drop, or are we going have fund managers using the pullback to build up positions? I'm leaning toward the latter.

We lost all of our power. We're on backup power. Our guys aren't trading.

Every market and every sector has different things that make it tick. So when we're looking, for example, at developed markets, we are bottom up stock pickers. We'll pick the best companies and see what kind of allocation that ends up giving us.

Eliminating the dividend tax is a psychological positive for the market, ... but at the end of the day, it's no big deal.

There's a general concern about the economy and corporate profits. The deals seem to be driven by the ability to reduce costs or create greater synergies of scale, so it's not something that's going to help them meet next quarter's earnings.

There's a general concern about the economy and corporate profits, ... The deals seem to be driven by the ability to reduce costs or create greater synergies of scale, so it's not something that's going to help them meet next quarter's earnings.

There's nothing for investors to latch on to with conviction. We're being tested on both sides. With no clear-cut view that things are getting better, the (economic) recovery keeps getting pushed out.

These are all quality names in their sectors, all giving negative guidance, and I think that's shaking investors.

After a big up day like you had yesterday, you have to have some digestion. Once things run up by a big amount, then investors have to step back.

Once the market has fallen far and fast, there tends to be a pause.

Demand will keep energy tight. Any pullback I view as an opportunity to add to positions.

Anybody who was asleep through all of this is getting jolted awake. A lot of people are back to where they were when they originally started investing.

This is a market that has no confidence. Corporate confidence is shot, confidence in earnings is shot, and confidence in Wall Street analysts is gone. Only time is going to heal that.

A lot of the other cyclically sensitive sectors have already run 50-to-100 percent from the September lows. Energy is one sector that's lagged a little bit there and we think there is still some value,

There was nothing that was said to inspire confidence. Until we see some end-market pickup, I'm not going to be convinced the end is near.

There's been very little investment in infrastructure at these companies over the past decade -- tech was sucking up all the capital, ... Demand is picking up and you have this big, new demand from China, which is pulling away supply that might otherwise have headed to the United States.

As we kick off earnings season, it's going to be important what these companies are saying. Estimates are down so low, that if companies keep disappointing, markets are gonna have a big hurdle to overcome.

It seems to me that this is a market where fundamental analysis has fallen flat. If you're looking for higher quality companies whose fundamentals are on the mend, you're not catching this market.

It's a little chicken and egg. The flows tend to follow the market, but when you get a nice six months in a row, the momentum can begin to carry itself.

It's the wildest market I've seen in some time,

It's always been the case of something you suspect but have never been able to prove. Earnings seem improbably smooth when you look at the businesses of the company.

It may have taken a little while for (3M and Lexmark) to sink in. Lexmark is certainly not a bellwether, but it was one of the stable names in the tech sector.

It may have taken a little while for (3M and Lexmark) to sink in, ... Lexmark is certainly not a bellwether, but it was one of the stable names in the tech sector.

It's unlikely the market would get a boost from that kind of a result. This time we have such a good outcome priced in that I don't think we'll have a huge rally once this is over.

Everyone has talked about employment being the missing link in the recovery, but as the weekly jobless claims have made clear for some time, employment is moving in the right direction, it's just moving very slowly. At whatever point a substantial recovery in jobs really takes hold, that's probably going to be a difficult time for the stock market.

The Fed decision was basically right on top of expectations. Even the tone of their comments was balanced, as it should be. I don't think there were any surprises.

If your company comes up on the list of those that haven't signed, ... there's going to be a lot of questioning.

Intel says it can't put a number on the value of employee options. But any estimate is closer to the truth than zero.

In our view, we're going to have another down leg here because of the consumer. If you keep laying people off, that doesn't bode well for future consumer purchases. We have a negative savings rate and we no longer have the gains from the portfolios which were increasing wealth.

Investors have been ignoring earnings and looking forward, pretty much discounting the third quarter and looking to early 2002. I don't see any major roadblocks on the horizon for now. We have staying power in the very short term.

Investors had to decide this (Monday) morning whether last week's rally was real or just a knee-jerk reaction to the previous week's losses.

If you're a manager who's been way behind this year, this is your last chance to try and close the gap and salvage the year. So you're going to do exactly that.

I had fish for a while, and after they died the market didn't do so well.

I don't think it adds any certainty to investors' uncertainty about the future.

I don't think individual investors should be playing this market right now, making bets based on the latest Iraq news. Once the war ends, we've got underlying fundamental issues that will return to focus. The war is not the reason the economy is having trouble. Fundamentals have gotten worse since the beginning of the year and yet the market has gone higher because of the focus on Iraq.

I can't stand the dollar. There's nothing that's going to save it and it's going to get worse .

I don't think there's going to be enough bad news in December to send us lower. My guess is we go up through the end of December and we meet our day of reckoning sometime in the new year.

I don't think there's any fraud there, but they're the king of creative and aggressive accounting.

I don't see anything fundamental that's going to reverse the market's direction. We're going to get a lot of red flashing on our screens.

However, expectations for this quarter in general are so low that it will be fairly easy for companies to beat and that can give us a short-term boost. But will it mean anything? Expectations for the subsequent quarters are still too aggressive and unrealistic.

The majority of earnings have been good, but there have been some misses and the market has reacted violently to them. This is a week that has put me on alert.

The undertone to the market is still somewhat positive. The economic data shows that we have bottomed. It's what allowed markets to recover in early January. But the accounting issues are here to stay.

The market was down so far so fast recently that I don't think it takes much to get a bounce here. Investors were just determined today to be optimistic.

The markets obviously liked it. For a day.