Robert Bloom Quotations

We're sort of in uncharted territories because of the bubble that we had last year in Nasdaq, ... And the bursting of that often takes a long time to work through.

We're still in a negative trend. Long-term interest rates are too high, earnings estimates are still too high. We've had seven out of eight down weeks, so we saw a little bounce in the beginning of this week. But the downward pressure hasn't eased.

What we look for is consistent growers where the earnings haven't disappointed, ... We have a few of those in mind, some of the traditional growth stocks. General Electric is a good example.

On the same idea, we would take Wal-Mart, ... They had their analyst meeting last week, and they made an incredible statement. This is a $200 billion company with 1.4 million employees, it's the largest retailer in the world. And they said the opportunities in front of us are bigger than the opportunities that we've already seen. That's an incredible statement. Whether it's true or not, we won't know for another five-to-10 years. But we think just with Super Centers, that they can grow at double-digit rates over the next five-to-10 years.

If the guidance from Dell is positive, that could give us a boost. The question is whether the consumer can continue to hang in long enough for IT (information technology) spending to bottom and pick up. So something good from Dell would be encouraging.

Some of the consumer non-durable stocks like Pfizer, Colgate and even General Electric, which is one of the best managed companies in the business, we think look attractive here,

Juries don't like to say someone is not guilty, if they committed the crime, ... particularly if that crime was violent.

We are not going to allow this kind of evidence. We have a Constitution, we have a Bill of Rights, we have a sense of fairness. That is what we're going to focus on.

We would look at consumer non-durables, where there is consistency of earnings, visibility of earnings, names like PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive and Safeway, are consumer non-durable names we've been adding to here in this decline,

You have to put it in the context of a bull market that's just been phenomenal. The market entered Dow 10,000 in a vulnerable position.

Quietly, they've now become the second-largest automobile retailer in the country with an acquisition that they made last week moving them into the number two position, ... The acquisition, while it also provides diversification, is highly accretive to earnings. We were estimating (1999 earnings per share of) $1.50. We're now saying $1.75. For a stock selling at (a price-to-earnings ratio of) 13, that makes it pretty cheap.

They've had 23 consecutive quarters now of higher sales and earnings. And we think that can continue. We think their growth rate is inherently in the mid-20s. And while the stock is not cheap, on the other hand, it will never get very cheap because there haven't been any mistakes.

Their PC shipments look like they're going to be up 25 percent, better than expected. Hewlett has had a nice run in here...we think it should be part of a continuing solution for the problem of higher labor costs. The continued substitution of technology for labor will maintain margins.

The headlines are pretty bad right now. You can think of a lot of reasons for the market to sell off.

The market is reacting to the day-to-day news, which reflects the continuing uncertainty that an economic recovery is on the way. We see that with the numbers this morning.