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American Morning

America Recovers: 'Fortune''s Andy Serwer Discusses Chances for Consumer Confidence II

Aired September 25, 2001 - 09:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go back to Bill Hemmer, who is standing by in Times Square, not too far from the Nasdaq marketsite.

You have had a chance to talk with folks who have a lot of their hard-earned money invested in stocks and mutual funds. What are they telling you this morning?

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm getting an overall feeling of apprehension when people talk about the U.S. economy and what they feel going forward. Some people, frankly, are quite down about their attitude, a feeling of pessimism from some. But we gather reaction from others who say hang in there, it's going to be OK, and they paint a picture, a silver lining, of optimism.

But at the Nasdaq marketsite, behind me, Andy was exactly right. He put his finger right on it. Yesterday, there was a huge sigh of relief for investors, knowing about the big bounce yesterday, coming off a terrible week last week, the Nasdaq down 16 percent for five days of trading last week. Yesterday, it got about a third of that back.

But it's a long haul to go. And if you remember, coming off the bull rush of the late '90s, how far a number of technology stocks, especially on the Nasdaq, had fallen, last week's news was just more bad, bad medicine. Again, we saw a jump yesterday, up about 76 points, but right below that 1,500 mark, we're seeing the futures trading prior to the open moving somewhat upward.

But as Andy mentioned, we could be in for another volatile day. Curious to know from him, the volume here yesterday was about 2 million shares traded, and a lot of investors will tell you volume is what they need for the markets to get moving.

ZAHN: I see Andy nodding his head in agreement with you, Bill.

Let's go back to him for a final thought on what we should get prepared for.

Thanks, Bill.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE": Bill's right, you need volume like that to build a base to get out of the gutter here. Unfortunately, we still have these two big things overhanging investors' minds, and that's the economy continuing to decline, and the situation, the military situation -- the retaliation, the prolonged war, the new war -- which when you have those kinds of uncertainties, Paula, it's really hard to get moving, to get positive.

ZAHN: That may be true, yet the latest polling done by Gallup, CNN, and "USA TODAY" says I believe 75 percent of all Americans think a year from now things will be OK.

SERWER: The question is you watch what they do and not what they say. We'll see if people are going to really go in and buy stocks. We have some consumer confidence numbers coming out at 10:00. Those may give us even more clues.

ZAHN: We will come to you for those statistics.

SERWER: OK.

ZAHN: Save them for us. Thanks, Andy.

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