Keep an Eye on CEOsGovernment policy decisions could speed or slow the pace of rehabilitat

Keep an Eye on CEOs

Government policy decisions could speed or slow the pace of rehabilitation for the banks, and (31) turn, the stock market. David A. Hendler, a New York-based bank analyst at Credit-Sights, says his job has shifted from financial analysis toward Washington analysis. Essentially, his task is to figure (32) how quickly the government will permit weak banks to consolidate. When investors believe (33) know which banks will survive, they'll buy their stocks. The process is (34) critical to the stock market that Richard Bernstein, chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch, is tracking six signposts for financial industry consolidation. Among them: the extent to which the government carves up and sells bad banks rather than buying into them to prop them (35) Other strategists are keeping a close eye on the people who really know what's happening in the economy: business leaders. Biderman says he'll know corporations are getting confident (36) they start buying back their own shares and acquiring other companies. Right now they show no such bravado. Announcements of share buybacks are down 90% from a year ago, leaving that market thermometer so cold that the mercury is off the scale.

In the end, the timing of the bear's retreat (37) likely hinge on that great market imponderable: psychology. How investors feel has a lot to do with (38) they start seeing mixed signals as proof of a glass half-full. "The market stress causes the analytical part of our brains to shut down, and that makes us hyperreactive (39) bad news, "says Michael A. Ervolini, CEO of Cabot Research, a consultancy catering to institutional investors. People become convinced conditions are worse than rock-bottom bad, he says. Only (40) they see that they've overacted can things improve: "We look for the market to start saying tomorrow will be brighter."

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