Alan Kral Quotations

We have reallocated out of bonds. We got a little bit nervous back in December. However, now that bond yields have gotten back to where they are and stock price are where they are, I think you're going to take a real look at bonds and maybe take some money off the table.

Now that the baseline of demand has returned and (oil) prices returned to around $20 to $21 a barrel, the environment is such that there will be a return to exploration, and Schlumberger will be a big beneficiary.

But the real risk that we have to see with the economy is -- does it take another leg down based upon consumer spending?

What you're seeing today is that swing back and forth. There's always a range of expectations, which means he'll (Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan) always disappoint somebody, and a lot of that disappointment was reflected yesterday.

I think the Fed is hanging its hopes on a couple of things. The bond price has dropped and yields have gone up and it is doing the job for them. . . the economy as a whole is slightly slower in the second quarter than it was in the first. There's hope that it will tail off to a more sustainable rate.

I think we will bounce after a down couple of days.

I think what people will begin to focus on is earnings going forward.

I think what we saw yesterday (Tuesday) was a bounce in the bear market. It could continue. There's no question there are going to be sharp rallies all the way along in here. But I think the trend has been as long as the Fed has been active, we've basically seen a down market with some rallies in it.

Overlying everything, you've got the election and there's a lot of uncertainty.

People have been looking for reasons to buy. There's so much money around and that places the bias in the market on the upside.

I think people are just not going to respond to what the Fed does if it's only 25 basis points (a quarter point). In order to have any kind of impact he has to change people's actions, he has to change what people do.

The AT&T thing gets some money flowing around into the mergers-and- acquisitions end of the business, which is adding some froth. The underlying bias is on the upside until bad news comes out, and I don't think the bad news is over.

We'll continue to see volatility for two reasons. First, there's no straight line of good numbers continuously coming out of the economy.

We pick those two for their exposure to the domestic market. We think the recovery in Asia is lifting demand and has re-established a floor under oil prices, and we don't expect prices to drop any time in the near term.

We like the oil stocks. Oil has been in the dumpster for several years. We're starting to see the price hikes. Oil is up over $30 a barrel. This ought to be positive for these companies.

We think the rally in Nasdaq over the past two weeks is really a relief rally. The relief is they don't think the Fed has to go any further.

Two that need to be looked at are J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch. J.P. Morgan because they have been heavily involved internationally over the last couple of years, and Merrill Lynch is the leading retail financial brokerage stock in the country. How they did coming out of the fourth quarter is very important.

The defense sector has had quite a run over the past 18 months. As people start to anticipate a war scenario, we're seeing a little froth in these stocks.

The whole last couple of weeks with the economic information that has come out has totally changed people's expectations with regard to the economy going forward.

Probably there won't be any peace until after the Fed has spoken. This is a very sensitive time in the market and you'd better be comfortable with the stocks you own.

Once we get past the CPI, we'll be right into Fed watch. Just because the numbers report a slower economy doesn't' mean that we're looking at anything more than the natural seasonal response.

The big risk with the stocks that have done well recently is that the economy is so strong that it can't continue, and when it slows down, that will hurt earnings. Secondly, when the Fed finally acts to slow the economy and bring down inflation, it will be a double-whammy to earnings - and it will be an extra big whammy to those stocks that have been in the situation where they really need strong earnings growth going forward.

They're heavily into the insurance business, but in a very interesting way, in terms of an arbitrage between the buyers and sellers. They don't take an awful lot of insurance risks for themselves and they've been able to demonstrate the ability to make money in both soft markets and hard markets for insurance premiums.

Absent bad news, the market wants to go up. There's a lot of money around and a lot of hope around.

Everyone is waiting to see if the Fed does anything, and if it doesn't, what it says about the economy over the rest of the year.

The Fed made it reasonably clear they will raise rates again. The Fed is impacting the Dow stocks and not impacting the Nasdaq stocks.

Cisco reports tomorrow (Tuesday) and Cisco is the 800-pound gorilla of technology nowadays. People are reasonably confident that it ought to be a pretty good number and that has set the tone for the tech group as a whole. More than half of the Dow's gains are in technology stocks.

Cisco is the 800-pound gorilla of technology nowadays. People are reasonably confident that it ought to be a pretty good number and that has set the tone for the tech group as a whole. More than half of the Dow's gains are in technology stocks.

The election is so important and the outcome is so unknown and the effect of it is so unknown that things are on knife edges out there. I know somebody will benefit but I just don't know who.

The earnings stink. Earnings are down 16 percent, multiples are sky high, and the whole world is built on hope and a lot of cash flow.