MORE OPINIONS

Bob Brinker of the Market Timer newsletter says in his latest issue (March) that he expects the markets to "test" the January lows on lower volume and make new higher some time in 2008/2009. So far the lower volume theory is dead on- One may not think much of the radio personality but he did call the top in 2000 and the bottom in 2002/2003.

Ken Fisher, generally bullish and in the latest edition of Forbes- notes the following:

The credit squeeze-

"If you believe the popular economic myths of the day, you think there's a credit squeeze--less total credit available. This is nonsense. There's indeed less credit available to poor risks, individual and corporate. But that just means there's more for the good borrowers."

"Total corporate borrowing--that is, total U.S. corporate debt issuance--was higher in 2007 than in 2006. In January 2008 U.S. corporate borrowing was $101 billion, up slightly from the same month a year ago. The majority of this debt was of investment grade, meaning that it was rated BBB or better; within this segment the borrowings were up 12% from a year ago. Some credit crunch! companies are flush with capital and borrowing power. This is bullish, both for the economy and for stocks, especially stocks of big companies."

Ken on takeovers and buybacks:

"A parallel myth is that corporations have stopped doing takeovers and stock buybacks. Tell that to Microsoft. It's just that we've changed from a lot of small deals to fewer bigger ones. By the fourth quarter "credit crunch" headlines were ubiquitous, yet fourth-quarter 2007 announced takeovers were $478 billion, the fourth-largest quarter ever. The volume was a $116 billion gain from the third quarter. Share repurchase announcements in January totaled $59 billion, up 16% from a year ago. That's a $700 billion annual rate. The prior four months were also up--collectively, by 63.5%, to $276 billion ($828 billion annualized)."

And Ken's take on the big C:

"It's going to take years for the financial sector to recover from its excesses, just as it took years for energy to recover from the 1980 collapse and for technology to recover from 2000. Still, I like Citigroup (25, C). The stock costs less than half of what it did last year. The market value of $129 billion looks high against earnings of $3 billion. But those earnings reflect the subprime writeoffs. These writeoffs have simply nothing to do with the underlying business. Take them out of the equation and you find Citi going for four times operating earnings. I think this is a $40 stock by mid-2009."