Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at
Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida, talks about the outlook for financial and housing markets, investing in
dividend-paying stocks, and some of his equity recommendations.
Jeffrey Saut Doesn’t See Bottom in Financials, Housing
Source:
Jeffrey Saut Doesn’t See Bottom in Financials, Housing: Video
Bloomberg, June 3 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aZoK7LLVEVTc
It is hard not to agree, but we have seen this trading behavior many times during the year. Whether or not this is the “ultimate low” is still undecided, but like recent quarters, the strategy has been: new unexpected writedowns, then fear of collapse followed by new capital raise and/or borrowing from the fed, then fear the system is breaking, and then a very nice double digit rally. I would think we are in the fear of collapse new capital raise portion. Getting close to a trading rally again.
Aside from EQ does anyone know what those other two companies are that he is talking about. The closest thing I can come up with are two companies on the pink sheets.
one of them is traded on the nasdaq: ALSK
Be careful of this guy’s recommendations. He was pumping GE in July of 2007 (on the PBS show NBR).
For what he does (Chief equity salesman), Saut’s pretty good. Are his calls always spot on, absolutely not. But he’s certainly more honest than most of his lot, who have never met a market they didn’t buy– Jim Paulsen, Ph.D. in particular: https://www.wellscap.com/people/james_paulsen.html
And, considering the cast of serial bottom-callers in financials, from Kotok & Bove, to Whitman & Kass (e tu Dougie?), he’s certainly passing on the Fed spiked Kool-Aid that his brethern keep coming back for.
Still, most market commentary from CIOs is usually for entertainment (sandbagging or client fishing) purposes only.
Up until today I was of the mind to believe financials might have bottomed in March. The one thing that stood out was the relatively marked increase in the volume of shares traded during their recent swoon. Typically, this has been indicative of strong underlying support.
However, with rumors about Lehman Brothers swirling today, I took a closer look at all the financials. It occurred to me my prior judgment might be mistaken. One crucial element indicative of a bottom being at hand was missing in all the financials I looked at (save one … Citigroup).
Specifically it was the character of the volume of shares traded at the March low.
Generally speaking, all the financials tanked in January, corrected, then set new lows in March.
However, coincident with the March lows was a volume of shares traded GREATER THAN that registered during January’s bloodbath.
This was true for LEH, MER, MS, GS, JPM.
Typically, at the end of a high-volume sell-off you would expect the final low to coincide with diminishing volume. This was not the case for any of the above firms.
Therefore, I suspect the rumors swirling today surrounding Lehman Brothers might prove problematic for the stock market in general.
At the very least it seems quite likely most financials are set to take out their respective March lows. It remains to be seen if this will occur on a volume of shares indicative of a bottom being put in.