Abby Joseph Cohen

» Kirk - Goldman's Cohen says U.S. bulls still running Tuesday June 2,

Goldman's Cohen says U.S. bulls still running

Tuesday June 2, 8:17 am Eastern Time

KRONBERG, Germany, June 2 (Reuters) - Goldman, Sachs & Co analyst Abby Joseph Cohen said on Tuesday she
expected the U.S. bull market to continue, dismissing suggestions the current stall on Wall Street was a precursor to a
market decline.

``We are bullish on the U.S. equity market,'' Cohen told a gathering of bankers. ``I believe very strongly that stock
prices will move higher once we come out of the current trading range.''

Cohen, regarded as one of Wall Street's premier gurus because of her record predicting the market's direction, said
U.S. shares were trading at fair values considering companies' 12-month earnings potential.

``If you want to look beyond that, we believe (the market) is undervalued,'' Cohen said.

Cohen said U.S. firms would likely sustain their first quarter profit growth rate of 6.5 percent and could raise earnings
growth to as high as eight percent.

``For the next year, we believe this rate of profit will be maintained,'' she said.

The Asian crisis posed little risk to U.S. expansion, Cohen said.

``Asia is more important as a source of production than as a source of demand,'' she said.

Concern that employment cost growth in the U.S. could prompt the Federal Reserve to raise borrowing rates was
exaggerated because wage growth there was limited to the service sector, specifically the financial industry, and did
not spill into goods producing sectors, Cohen said.

Moreover, the increase in wages was largely due to end-of-year bonuses paid to employees.

``The employment cost picture will look tamer in the second quarter than some bears are predicting,'' Cohen said.
``Fears of wage inflation at this point are significantly overstated.''

Cohen also argued that the strong dollar had failed to hamper U.S. economic activity and that the trade deficit did not
take into account that a significant portion of U.S. exports are high-tech products that are not available elsewhere.

``We are selling goods and providing services that are value added,'' she said.

Kirk Lindstrom

Editor: Personal Finance and Investing
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-- posted by Kirk

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» Kirk - Goldman's Cohen tells clients she's still bullish Tuesday Jun

Goldman's Cohen tells clients she's still bullish

Tuesday June 16, 1:10 pm Eastern Time

NEW YORK, June 16 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs U.S. equity strategist Abby Joseph Cohen said that despite a deepening
Asian crisis, she is still expecting solid gains in U.S. stocks in 1998 because of the solid fundamentals in the U.S. economy.

``We are quite keen on the outlook for U.S. securities,'' Cohen said, speaking on a conference call.

She said she expects U.S. stocks to soon break out on the upside of the trading range in which they have been stuck since
April. She said currently, U.S. stocks are near the bottom of the trading range.

``There are important forces that mitigate the effects of Asian developments on the United States and by and large, weak
growth in Asia is just a moderate negative for U.S. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and U.S. corporate profits,'' she said.

Cohen, speaking one day after the Dow industrials dropped 207 points, reiterated her view that the 30-stock blue chip
average would move convincingly through 9300 in 1998 and that the Standard & Poor's 500 would move ``easily and
convincingly'' through 1150.

The Dow was up 20 points to 8648 near midday while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up nearly six points to 1083.

Cohen said the choppy trading range has been caused by investor focus on Asia, the path of corporate profits and inflation.
Inflation currently seems negligible, she said.

In terms of corporate profits, Cohen said she is still expecting profit growth of five to six percent for the Standard & Poor's
500 companies ``even if Asia stays extremely weak''.

She ticked off a few reasons for her steadfast profit outlook. ``We are reasonably well insulated from the effects of Asia
because a fairly small amount of the U.S. economy is devoted to direct trade -- about 15 pct of GDP,'' she said.

That foreign trade is also well-balanced geographically between Asia, Europe and the Americas.

She also said that with the U.S. economy now more service-driven, it is less likely to be battered as commodity production
has decreased as a percentage of GDP.

Even the impact that has been felt on U.S. balance sheets has been mixed, she said. Although companies selling to Asia have
seen profits fall, those producing there have benefited.

She also said she thinks stock market valuations and price/earnings ratios are reasonable, with stocks trading below 22 times
1998 earnings and below 20 times 1999 earnings.

Cohen, one of Wall Street's most widely tracked strategists, used her trademark ``sweater'' analogy:

``When you buy a sweater at a significant discount, and you come home and find a button missing, you're not likely to be
agitated.'' But if you paid full price, like investors who bought stock at higher prices, you might become very upset, even
though it was only a small button.

``All in all, we remain very constructive still on the U.S. equity market ... and we think many of the concerns expressed have
been overstated,'' she said.

Her comments followed a presentation by Goldman's chief economist Gavyn Davies, who said that ``the Asian shock is now
getting bigger.''

From http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980616/gold...

Kirk Lindstrom

Editor: Personal Finance and Investing
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» Kirk - Another Abbey J Cohen opinion that is not so flattering... To

Another Abbey J Cohen opinion that is not so flattering...

To: +Skeeter Bug (7655 )
From: +Double D
Saturday, Sep 5 1998 9:58AM ET
Reply # of 7660

AJ Con: More on Her Deteriorating Reputation

http://fnews.yahoo.com/street/view.html

View From TheStreet.com

Sep 02, 1998

Market Features: Abby Cohen's Heavy Halo Starts to Show Some Tarnish

By Justin Lahart
Senior Writer

Nevermind the market; the Abby Joseph Cohen myth is showing signs of cracking.

At midday on Tuesday, Aug. 4, a day when the market was already falling, Ralph
Acampora, Prudential Securities' widely followed chief technical analyst, got on his
firm's squawk box and said the Dow Jones Industrial Average could fall 15% to 20%
from its high. The Dow was down about 140 points when Acampora's call went out. At
the end of the day, it had dropped 299 points to 8487.

Acampora's call was met with something akin to derision. He'd kicked the market when
it was down. His flip-flop from the day before, when his
Dow-10,000-by-the-end-of-the-year call was still in place, showed that he was no
more than a finger in the wind. A grandstander.

It was comments from Cohen, Goldman Sachs' influential market strategist, the
following day that helped steady the market.
Cohen said that she believed the market had entered the lower end of a trading range
that it had entered in April, that the market's stair-step pattern would lead, once again,
to an explosive riser.

A month, and more than 600 downside points, later, Acampora's call seems pretty
good. And there are a lot of people on Wall Street questioning whether Cohen is really
up to the market-seer status that she's had in the past.

"The way the press and the media treated my friend Ralph Acampora was horrible,"
complained Bill Meehan, market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, a former Pru strategist.
"Yet there have been a lot of other people who have not made extraordinarily
accurate calls [who] have gotten glowing praise from the press."

This complaint about Cohen, who declined to comment for this story, is not really new.
She has come under attack in the past for her calls on small-cap stocks -- with
the Russell 2000 down more than 20% this year, her prediction earlier this year
for a small-cap return of 15% appears unlikely -- and for her commodity
allocations. And indeed, there are plenty of people who had far more aggressive asset
allocations during this year's rally (Lehman Brothers strategist Jeffrey Applegate's 75%
stock, 25% bonds asset mix comes to mind). There have been plenty of people who
have made better sector calls (investors who have followed Merrill Lynch quant Rich
Bernstein's continued recommendation of high-quality stocks have profited
handsomely).

But that is not the point. Cohen's optimism has been unwavering since February 1991.
Just as important: Her concept, first formulated in 1992, of stocks moving up in a
stair-step pattern, with periods of leveling out followed by explosive moves forward. As
the major indices have moved inexorably higher, following the stair-step pattern
perfectly, Cohen was put into the unfortunate role of market seer.

Now it appears that the market has fallen away from the pattern, so presciently called
by Cohen, that carried it forward for seven years. The bull market in stocks is looking
shaky. And criticism of Cohen is getting louder.

"Everyone said Ralph Acampora was crazy when he said we were in a bear market,"
said one trader. "Now everyone is saying Abby Joseph Cohen is crazy for being
bullish."

Many believe that Cohen is basically hemmed into her position, that because
she has become such a symbol of the bull market, she would send the market
into a tailspin if she even showed misgivings at this juncture.

"I personally would not want to be in Abby Joseph's shoes right now," said Meehan.
"The market would be susceptible to a 10% decline if she came out and said she was
nervous or cautious. In her case, having that much power is a problem. I see her as
having less room to move than the Fed."

It is indeed a horrible position to be put into. On the day his call was derided for
steepening the market's fall, Acampora told TheStreet.com, "I open my mouth and the
Dow gets clipped -- it's scary as hell. But, trust me, I don't need this for my ego." And
Acampora, though his calls are powerful, is still a lesser deity than Cohen. If Cohen
went negative now, she could bring stocks down so low that to be fair to her clients and
to her job, she would have to turn around and recommend buying the next day.

There is also a more cynical notion afoot on Wall Street. The market's
downturn comes ahead of Goldman Sachs' planned IPO this fall, and the idea
that Cohen is under pressure to keep equity prices up ahead of the floatation
has unkindly been aired more often than it should. If Cohen continues to view the
market positively -- and it seems very likely that she will -- and she's proved to be,
heaven forbid, fallible, dark rumors that she had kept her bullish outlook at the
behest of Goldman's management will follow.

This is what happens when a market strategist becomes a market event -- an almost
inevitable process on Wall Street. It was not just the accuracy of her portrayal of the
market and steadfast bullishness, which proved right again and again, that put Cohen
into this position. She has, by all accounts, a high degree of integrity. She's good with a
quote. She still takes the bus every day from Queens. She is, when it comes down
to it, a good story -- a story that Wall Street and the media have been happy to tell
again and again, glossing over her mistakes, making her into somebody that nobody else
is.

With the market off more than 15% from its July highs, perhaps it is right for people to
find fault with Cohen for not catching the downturn. If stocks continue to struggle, and
Cohen continues to call them higher, criticism for that makes sense as well. But the
danger is that she would be demonized -- and casual, off-the-record comments from
several portfolio managers, strategists and traders suggest that this may already be
happening.

Perhaps at this troubled juncture on Wall Street, we will finally learn our lesson. We will
gently take Abby Joseph Cohen off her pedestal and let her go back to being a
hardworking strategist who often, but not always, gets it right. We will let the
pedestal stand empty as a reminder that nobody really belongs there, or
deserves that kind of pain.

But the reality is that if there were no prophet for the market, we would invent one. And
that is a damn shame.

c 1998 TheStreet.com, All Rights Reserved.

DD

Kirk Lindstrom

Editor: Personal Finance and Investing
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-- posted by Kirk

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» Kirk - From Wally M. @ SI: P.S.- CNBC says Abby Cohen is now ca

From Wally M. @ SI:

P.S.- CNBC says Abby Cohen is now calling for a 12 month target of 1250 for the S&P 500 (I
assume DOW 10,000 ?). On the 10 Oct. 1998 show, Bob was looking for 6 to 12 month targets of
1210 & 9500. CNBC also said that she will probably be made a full partner at Goldman Sachs
(announcement pending on new partnerships)

Kirk Lindstrom

Editor: Personal Finance and Investing
Reading List

-- posted by Kirk

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