Far more buyers reported locally

Monday was a long trading day for local brokers watching a plunging stock market and dealing with anxious investors.

In the first day of trading since terrorism shut down markets Sept. 11, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 684.81 points.

The Nasdaq composite, considered the world's technology benchmark, slumped more than 115 points, and the S&P 500 Index tumbled 4.9 percent to 1,038.77.

But on the local scene, buyers outnumbered sellers. Two large stock firms, Edward Jones and A.G. Edwards, reported heavy buying, about 10-to-1.

And while area brokers weren't surprised by the plunge, some wondered how bad it would get.

"I didn't think it would go this far down," said Philip Dame of Raymond James Financial Services Inc., 1320 N. Kingshighway. "There was a lot of volume Monday. I'm going to watch and let the market play out. We've survived past crises, and we will survive this one. The key is not to panic."

Dame said the Federal Reserve's half-point interest rate cut was no big surprise.

"The market expected that," he said. "Without it, there would have been bigger negative."

Marsha Limbaugh of the A.G. Edwards office at Cape Girardeau explained it simply: The market hates uncertainty, and the nation seldom has been this uncertain about what the future holds. She said 95 percent of her trades Monday were buying.

"A lot of people were looking for good values," Limbaugh said. "And there were some good values from a lot of blue-chip stocks. Buyers found some of their 'wish list' stocks at prices they could afford."

Patriotic buying

Others bought to be patriotic, said Bart Ozbun of Merrill Lynch in Cape Girardeau. Maybe they couldn't go to New York and clean up the rubble, but they wanted to show their confidence in America's economy and help boost it.

But buying by bargain hunters and patriots couldn't outweigh heavy losses in some sectors.

Although the Dow was down just over 7 percent, airline stocks were down as much as 40 percent with cancellations and layoffs crushing the industry.

And other industrial giants were hurting.

"General Electric took a big hit," said Donna Domian of Edward Jones in Cape Girardeau. "GE is also involved in insurance, some of it involving World Trade Center clients. Its stock fell about 12 percent."

She's telling clients to hang on.

"Just because the market was down Monday doesn't mean it will keep going down," Domian said.

She pointed to past crises in America.

The Dow Jones industrial average was at approximately 117 when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 and fell to 93 in the first five months of World War II. But it rallied to 145 by July 1943. During the Cuban missile crisis in August 1962, the Dow was 615. It fell to 550 in two months but rallied to 655 by December 1962 and to 765 by December a year later.

rowen@semissourian.com

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