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Where is the stock market bottom?

Marketplace Staff Sep 11, 2008
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Where is the stock market bottom?

Marketplace Staff Sep 11, 2008
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TEXT OF STORY

Bob Moon: We spoke a short time ago to stock trader Ted Weisberg of Seaport Securities on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He’s looking for some sign of a bottom, but doesn’t see one yet.


Ted Weisberg: When everybody gets so bearish that they can feel it in their stomachs and they don’t want to own stocks, they sell stocks, they don’t want to buy stocks, chances are we’re pretty close to a bottom and that’s when it will end. Unfortunately, I don’t get a sense having been on the trading floor for almost 40 years now, that we’re at that point. We seem to be in a market which reminds me of 1973, ’74 which I liken to water torture, it’s kind of a drip, drip, drip. You know, you get maybe one day, two good days and the rest of the market just goes sideways or down for three or four or five days and the pattern tends to repeat itself.

Moon: How much concern is there that Lehman could ultimately fail and take others down with them or at least inflict a lot of collateral damage on the way down?

Weisberg: Well, I think that’s certainly a possibility. I hope for a lot of reasons, clearly, that doesn’t turn out to be the case. Unfortunately, we are in an environment now where the cynics are basically driving the train.

Moon: Ted Weisberg of Seaport Securities, thank you very much.

Weisberg: My pleasure.

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