Donald Selkin Last Quotations

We did OK for the first half of the month and then faded out -- a lot of the economic data in the last few weeks have been a little discouraging. It's kind of a sour way to end a good quarter but not too bad for the month.

Maybe Exxon will go up a little bit today because they beat the earnings; but remember, the stock has dropped 7 points in the last couple of weeks. So I would say this is really not a very dynamic investment. People like it and get a little dividend. You are really wasting your time with these stocks because you invest money in them and in two years, you have the same price as you had from the time you invested. So you really, in a sense, lose money by owning these stocks.

We're projecting technology earnings are going to grow almost 40 percent this quarter and that's on top of a very, very strong 1999. Energy company earnings obviously will grow close to 80 percent, but that's on top of a weak '99. So there are companies that should have leadership. After all, if you look at the companies that issue profit warnings last week; Maytag, McDonald's, I mean I don't think the future of growth of American economy is washing machines or cheeseburgers.

We've had moon shots over the last few days, so this is natural. The market is digesting a lot of the gains it has made. The important thing is there is an asset allocation shift that has followed through from yesterday, with people getting out of bonds and into stocks.

Between Texas Instruments, the rise in oil prices, and commodities, we got hit today. But the decline wasn't terrible. Last week we had nice gains, and today, we're kind of consolidating.

All these earnings look pretty good. But after the huge stock run last year and the expectation of the good earnings, I think you're seeing a bit of that old 'sell the news' reaction.