With the markets soaring this week, brokers across the country are expressing different views as to how they are approaching business.
While one Merrill Lynch rep in the South says he’s “looking at this [market rally] as a chance to sell the tech and communications sectors,” an East Coast-based rep at UBS PaineWebber prefers “to stick to the old game” and encourage clients “to do money management.”
Meanwhile, a West Coast Prudential Securities rep, “I’m not changing my business in any way. My business is risk management, so my job is to keep clients from taking risks and positioning them to make a reasonable return. I’m not out to hit a home run. I’ll go for the singles and doubles.”
Tech stocks are leading the market rally, and the Pru rep, a veteran of 25 years in the business, says “younger brokers are getting excited, thinking tech is coming back. Old school brokers think differently. We know better.”
A fifth-year West Coast rep at Smith Barney says he is “excited” about the tech rally, but that “it’s still tough to justify a [tech] buy without watching the stocks for another few days,” he says. “The last thing we want to do is caught up too much in the excitement.”
The Merrill Lynch broker in the South says the rally “is a capital-spending correction and it takes years to recover from that. I know. I’ve been through enough bear markets and recessions.”
