Russ Koesterich Quotations

Core inflation (excluding volatile energy and food prices) has stayed relatively contained.

You have to ask yourself, if you sever the profitable part of a company from the part of the company that's less profitable, what do you have left? To me, this is an area that still has to develop, and I don't necessarily know if I would go forward with that.

We're just winding down the year, ending the year with these sort of small, middling gains, which to me makes sense because you've had opposing factors this year. On the one hand you've had good earnings and a robust economy, but on the other hand, you've been fighting the Fed. The two canceled each other out.

People are waiting to see what kind of change in policy language is going to accompany that statement. The question is, if the Fed is approaching (a neutral stance), how will its policy change in 2006?

The market was a little oversold. I think this (the run-up) is mostly technical. I don't think you can read too much into it, since there weren't a lot of drivers.

I think, overall, we're seeing some friendly economic data that helped the market out. That said, there's not a lot of catalysts out there that could take us much higher, unless oil drops $5 a barrel or the Fed comes out with amazingly clear language in its take on the economy, and neither of those are likely.

The PPI number is one data point that suggests the Fed is going to go further.

The market in general is not anywhere near the peaks it hit during the end of the bubble.

It's not going to have much significance for most market participants. Institutional investors tend to focus more on the S&P 500 and some of the other indexes.

Things have been very distorted by how warm the weather was in January. To some extent, we're trying to get a handle on how it impacted the economy. It helped retail spending and housing starts, but has hurt energy prices.