A Week on Wall Street

A Week on

Wall Street

The Week of

January 27 -31, 2003

Mr. Rukeyser started the show by blaming a number of important people for the stock market performing poorly. He said, "That there are a number of important people are not doing all they could be doing to help the stock market." President Bush was the first person he talked about. Global diplomacy, world peace, and military planning are some of the items on President Bush's priority list. Wall Street is not one of them. The ideal situation for Wall Street would be an immediate attack on Iraq with a victory within eight to ten hours. This would be followed immediately by a lower oil price and permanent peace and prosperity across the globe. Then Mr. Rukeyser talks about Saddam Hussein and how he is not helping the U.S. stock market. What he actually should do is to call off the terrorists, announce his resignation, and live a cushy retired life. He even said that we even let him have a few left over stock options but his eye is not on helping the U.S. stock market go up. Next he talks about the French who have their own agenda about the situation in Iraq, and jokingly said we should give them all of the McDonald's franchises in Baghdad. Finally, he finishes up with North Korea stating they are doing little to steady the nerves of U.S. equity investors.

The resignation of Ted Turner as vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner came as somewhat a surprise. AOL Time Warner posted the annual 2002 losses nearly at an unbelievable 100 billion dollars. This loss is most by a U.S. based company ever reported. Soon after this announcement Ted Turner, the vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner, resigns. This actually was worse for AOL's stock price which started the week just under $14 and ended the week at $ 11.66 per share.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average indicates even a late week come back spurred by better news on profits and recent manufacturing activity still leaves the Dow Jones down for the week. The NASDAQ which has been outperforming the Dow and S&P 500 this week also finishes down for the week slipping into negative numbers this year. One reason is due to Applied Materials whose semi-conductor making equipment orders fell more than expected.

Week Ending January 31, 2003

Market Indices Close Gain/Loss % Gain-Loss

Dow Jones Industrial Avg. 8053.81 -77.20 -0.95%

NASDAQ Composite 1320.91 -21.23 -1.58%

S&P 500 855.70 -5.7 -0.66%

NYSE Composite 4868.68 -11.51 -0.24%

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