Wall Street was a bit light-on for serious movers of money throughout the week, whether in foreign exchange, fixed interest, futures, commodity or equity markets. Many headed off to lie in the sun somewhere for all or most of the week so they could get the best spots before the peons arrived for their more limited Easter breaks. The biggest debate in some shops was whether the holiday-shortened atmosphere was creating the slow market or whether the slow market was creating the holiday atmosphere. A unanimous view wasn't reached but, whatever the indices were doing, it still was clear the market was continuing to struggle and continuing to disappoint those expecting it to be stronger. The analysts were all over the place, particularly in the technology sector.
Confusion reigns too over what the world's fund managers are up to.
After recounting their responses to Merrill Lynch's April survey, that firm's chief investment strategist, David Bowers, said he was puzzled by three things. First, fund managers' sector preferences are extraordinarily muted given expectations of a textbook equity turnaround, with their only significant trade being long on global banks and short on global telecoms. Secondly, cash levels remain lower than expected and although 4 out of 10 managers admit to being overweight cash, Merrill estimates the mean cash balance to be around 6.5 per cent. Sceptics might wonder whether the fund managers are lying to the surveyors but pessimists, on the other hand, no doubt will see it as confirmation that many fund managers haven't the faintest idea what to do. After all, the list of those who avoided the equity market meltdown is very, very short.