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Report from the NYSE

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by Peter Switzer

This report comes hot from the hallowed turf, which is the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And while it was a down day, there was a nice rebound when yours truly walked into Wall Street’s famous share pit.

The Dow dropped 39 points to 11,052.49 — that’s a 0.36 per cent loss — while the S&P 500 slipped 0.14 per cent to end at 1187.76 and the main spook factor were the debt dramas out of Europe.

A nice technical development was the fact that when the S&P 500 index dropped to 1177, near to the low point of the 50-day moving average, buyers supported stocks.

Among the people I interviewed, Art Cashin, the legendary head of floor trading operations for UBS at the NYSE, thinks economic data will have a lot to do with market direction but he’s wary of Korea and Europe.

Meanwhile Jeff Applegate, the chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is a believer in the bull story and he thinks the political, economic and market cycles will all help to push shares up into 2011.

Cashin is a little more wary but I have to say Applegate’s team picked the market bounce in March 2009 and there’s history that says year three of a presidential term is good for shares, especially after a mid-term election.

In other news, I liked the 6.4 per cent rise in retail on Black Friday and if the shops I have been going into are any guide, New York is an economy on the mend. Now the rest of the US has to join in and that’s why economic data this week and for the next six months will be critical to market direction.

Tomorrow, I interview BlackRock’s investment guru, Bob Doll, and his views on the market are really a must-watch.

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Published on: Tuesday, November 30, 2010