The market might reward some companies during the second half of 2004 for producing better-than-expected earnings because of the tax windfall, ... but history suggests that the market will penalize those same companies if their earnings decelerate in 2005 from 2004's tax-induced growth.

If you're in the equity market, you want to focus on the largest cap, highest quality companies,

At the rate it's going right now, profitability will accelerate, but at a very, very slow pace, ... much slower than what's implied by valuation in the market.

They could have diversified their holdings 2, 5 or even 10 years ago.

It will be interesting to see if these companies' misfortunes are indeed attributable to weather and temporary, or perhaps better attributable to the Fed and slowing economic growth.

Stocks with significant foreign exposure should help to support stocks. If the dollar continues to fall and commodity prices remain strong, then earnings are likely to be stronger than investors currently expect.

The big telecoms still have to be among the most disliked stocks in the world. They are so under-owned that if we see a continuation of more good news than bad, the stocks will perform quite well.

The more generators sold, the more consumer confidence has been hurt, as this would tend to indicate that people do not trust the infrastructure currently in place. If, however, consumers shrug off the ... situation and relatively few generators are sold, then this would be perceived as a positive.

People say these companies are closely held and that the executives are trying to diversify, but why now?

People used to build wealth through building equity in their homes. Today, people prefer to speculate on the price of their house by using historically high levels of leverage.