Michael Farr Market Quotations

I think things overall look pretty good. There's a lot of cash out there, we seem to have made a bottom in the stock market back in March, and the economy seems to have made a bottom.

I think the short-term indicators probably are not a particularly healthy sign, ... Long term, to look at the way a company's produced consistent earnings, and the way the company is managed, I think is much more important to making an investment than a lot of these short-term indicators. But, in a bull market, there's no such thing as bad news. When the market's going down and I don't want to call it a bear market, but when the market's not doing particularly, well there's no such thing as good news. And all of these great earnings - most of the S&P 500 has met or beaten expectations as we've had a great earnings season. And the market doesn't really seem to care. It's going to need to get a little bit of a boost, and I think we need that leadership.

Ebullience and exuberance are back. For a market that has lacked direction, it is reacting tenfold to the first positive catalyst that has come along.

They've got a huge market share, ... They're the industry leader. American Power Conversion is growing earnings at about 18 percent.

The post-Labor Day rally, I wasn't sold on. The fact that we didn't really crash over summer, I thought was a terrific blessing. I think sentiment is going to drive the market from here. The numbers are there, the numbers have not changed. The economy has not changed, it is still good, slowing down a little bit. We've got a nice stable platform. Earnings for second quarter were fabulous. They ought to be pretty good, I think, coming in here to the third quarter.

It was out of favor two months ago in this short-term mentality market. They're growing earnings. They're doing a very nice job. Intel, I think, is going to be a nice core holding for the next 5 years. This month, next month, this week, next week -- I don't think it matters. If you have money that can be in the market for 5 years, Intel is a good place for part of it.

I think we've been in a search for leadership in the market. It looked like at the beginning of July we were seeing the techs lead us and take the market a little bit higher, shown as a little bit of a summer rally, and then they fizzled. And so did the rest of the market. And we've just sort of swooped lower. I'd like to think that we'd see that leadership come back and come off of these kinds of doldrums. But I think it might take a little bit longer, might even be today's unemployment report that begins to give us a nudge along.