STOCK ADVANCE NARROWING; ANALYSTS SAY MARKET INVESTORS LACK COMMITMENT, WHICH MIGHT BE BAD SIGN.Byline: Phil Serafino Bloomberg News So much for the broad rally in U.S. stocks. The number of stocks declining each day on the New York Stock Exchange New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) World's largest marketplace for securities. The exchange began as an informal meeting of 24 men in 1792 on what is now Wall Street in New York City. has exceeded the advancing issues for most of the past three months, and the average stock in the Nasdaq Composite Index Nasdaq Composite Index An index that indicates price movements of securities in the over-the-counter market. It includes all domestic common stocks in the Nasdaq System (approximately 5,000 stocks) and is weighted according to the market value of each listed is down 32 percent from its peak of the past year. Market analysts who study trends in stock price moves and trading volume Trading volume The number of shares transacted every day. As there is a seller for every buyer, one can think of the trading volume as half of the number of shares transacted. That is, if A sells 100 shares to B, the volume is 100 shares. say it's a sign that investors lack conviction about the market - and could point to declines ahead. ``A narrow market usually ends badly, although sometimes it takes a while to do so,'' said Byron Wien, director of investment strategy at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. In the past few months, the market has looked much like it did in the first three months of the year, when the largest stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes soared while many other stocks lagged. The market began to broaden in March, as out-of-favor energy and industrial stocks rallied. Declining and advancing stocks were about even on the Big Board. That trend dissipated as the summer approached, though, and for the past three months about 200 more stocks have fallen each day than have risen on the NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange . For the holiday-shortened week, the S&P 500 fell 0.4 percent, the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.5 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average Dow Jones Industrial Average The best known U.S. index of stocks. A price-weighted average of 30 actively traded blue-chip stocks, primarily industrials including stocks that trade on the New York Stock Exchange. lost 0.5 percent. Investors say a handful of stocks are rising consistently because those companies are exceeding Wall Street's profit expectations. ``The 50 stocks that are delivering the goods are still delivering the goods,'' said Robert Bloom, chief investment officer for Friends, Ivory and Sime Ivory and Sime Friends Provident, the mutual life assurer, performed a reverse takeover of Ivory and Sime, the fund manager, in a £132m deal that will result in the creation of a group called Friends Ivory & Sime. Deal announced 8 November 1997. , which manages $4.3 billion. As interest rates go up and the economy slows, it makes sense that investors prefer fast-growing companies such as computer storage equipment maker EMC (1) (EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, MA, www.emc.com) The leading supplier of storage products for midrange computers and mainframes. Founded in 1979 by Richard J. Egan and Roger Marino, EMC has developed advanced storage and retrieval technologies for the world's largest companies. Corp., retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc., he said. |
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