第一季度经济将会好转?

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Well, it’s the first full trading week of 2009 and as the Wall Street proverb goes “as goes January, so goes the year”. Is it true? Let’s bring in Bob Laccino. He is a senior market strategist in Regan Global Capital, joining us now from Chicago. Thanks for being with us this Monday. I appreciate it Bob.

Anytime

What’s your overall sentiment? What are you hearing from the floor right now, bit of a nice rally at the end of last week. Is this a good indicator for the first quarter or at least of this year?

Well, I think it is a little presumptive to say that this entire first quarter will follow this few days and last few days of last year but it's definitely a positive, I mean, most of the traders I am talking to are coming in with sort of a renewed sense of giving this thing a shot on a long side, maybe taking smaller positions than they would in previous Januaries but you know after it is repeated over and over again, the worst year since 1931. I know a very few people that think this year is going to be as bad. I mean you are coming from a very, very low bottom, so I think there is some positive outlooks and some positive sentiment that may going into the month and I think January could finish strong overall.

Give me your predictions for the first quarter of this year just how much of a boost we might see for the markets at first three months. What are they gonna look like?

I think we are gonna see a flat quarter. I don’t think we are gonna see a one or two percent gain or a one or two percent loss. I think the market is absorbing and digesting bad news. I think most market participants believe that the largest bad news is out of the way. We might have some small dips here and there. But I think you are gonna see a flat first quarter. I think that’s gonna be positive once again given as negative as we have been. Flat will be a really, really small victory but a victory nonetheless.

President-elect Barack Obama  unveiling today the first part of his proposed stimulus plan on the docket, nearly 300 billion dollars in tax cuts and major investment in renewable energy, and our nation’s infrastructure, the early reaction to that. What are you hearing?

Oh, positive. It is a larger package should one is expected on the tax cut side. I think after the election, president-elect even backed off a little bit on potentially doing the tax cut. This is reinforcement that they are still committed to that. That’s… there are some people who don’t agree with those economic policies but this really, uh, cater to those people, cater to the people who believe in the renewable energy so traders overall have very positive effect on that. And we are hoping that kind of thing brings M&A activity back in the forefront starting with small and medium sized companies. That’s really the big key for the first and second quarters getting that activity going again.

And of course, that M&A activity is really important across the board especially for the financials big business, for them, of course. And then on Friday we get that all unemployment December jobs reported. Beyond that we know the total job losses for 2008. Most people think that’s going to top two million. How much will this playing? Are traders already pressing major job losses into the market at this point?

Well, they did, they are… If you gonna take a positive art of such a negative thing two million jobs lost last year the estimate. I think the positive is that people are expecting it to be bad whenever you have such a negative sentiment. The reason that those negative sentiment indicators work is because as negative it is very hard to surprise to the downside. When everyone thinks the ultimate downside, it’s the number that is going to come in. You generally get upside surprises, so believe it or not, I think for Friday could provide a little bit of a bullish boost to the equity markets.

Alright, we leave it there. Bob, thanks for joining us. (Thank you.) I appreciate it.

M&A

The phrase mergers and acquisitions (abbreviated M&A) refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling and combining of different companies that can aid, finance, or help a growing company in a given industry grow rapidly without having to create another business entity.

并购，或称购并，字义上可分为合并与收购（Mergers and acquisitions, M&A），是指企业战略、企业财务及管理方面有关购买公司、售卖公司或与不同公司结合的事宜。在不必再创造新的企业实体的前提下，帮助一间成长中的公司在某一特定行业迅速发展。

商场上的购并活动有如战国时期的合纵连横。