Bears Hold Sway Over Sentiment

Our sentiment survey finds the market averages could be in for their fourth straight weekly loss.
By Joseph Woelfel ,

Updated at 9:15 a.m. EST

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- After three straight weekly losses for the major market averages, a fourth could be in the cards if our sentiment survey reads right.

As of 9:15 a.m., survey-takers who were bearish totaled 46.1%, or 629 of the 1,363 votes cast in TheStreet.com's RealMoney Barometer Poll. Those who were bullish tallied 39.3%, or 535 of the votes cast, while 14.6%, or 199 participants in the poll were neutral.

Premarket futures suggest U.S. stocks will open higher on Wall Street Monday.

Investors are probably pleased to see January end, as the

Dow Jones Industrial Average

fell 3.5% and the

S&P 500

declined 3.7% during the month.

Nasdaq

slipped 5%. Some believe how goes January is how goes the year. Therefore, what does it mean for the rest of 2010?

Well, February will kick off this week with a bevy of earnings reports from majors such as

Exxon Mobil

(XOM) - Get Report

,

Pfizer

(PFE) - Get Report

,

Cisco

(CSCO) - Get Report

,

Visa

(V) - Get Report

and

United Parcel Service

(UPS) - Get Report

. A little less than half of the companies in the S&P 500 have so far reported fourth-quarter earnings.

The biggest economic report this week comes Friday, when investors get to digest the latest read on the nation's unemployment rate, which is expected to remain at 10%.

Most of the major banks have reported so far this earnings season, but survey-takers see the banking sector going either way this week, with bulls choosing it as the sector most likely to rise, and with bears, of course, choosing it to head in the other direction.

Bank of America

(BAC) - Get Report

rose 0.8% in January,

Citigroup

(C) - Get Report

gained 0.3% and

Wells Fargo

(WFC) - Get Report

went up by 5.3%.

JPMorgan Chase

(JPM) - Get Report

, however, fell 6.5%, and

Goldman Sachs

(GS) - Get Report

pulled back by 11.9%.

The precious metals sector came in second as the sector most likely to rise and the sector most likely to fall this week.

Meanwhile, in corporate news,

Citigroup

reportedly plans to sell or split off its $10 billion Citi Private Equity unit as part of the bank's effort to reduce debt.

Tokyo issued a

fix

Monday to repair sticking gas pedals. The automaker is recalling up to 9 million cars worldwide, including 2.3 million in the U.S and Canada, and has halted production of eight cars in the U.S., while it sought to determine how to fix the problem.

> > Bull or Bear? Vote in Our Poll

The poll closed at 9:15 a.m.

On Monday in Asia, stocks in Tokyo and Hong Kong rose modestly. Toyota lost 1.2%.

As of 9:15 a.m. Monday, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.3%, while Germany's DAX added 0.2%.

Here is a wrap-up of our other polls:

This past week, we asked readers of

TheStreet

whether they felt it was necessary for

Sirius XM

(SIRI) - Get Report

to re-sign

Howard Stern

-- at all costs -- and

the result was rather surprising.

Last week, Stern reportedly said, "I actually have an offer. Well, not a bona fide offer, but people have been making them." This week, he aired his thoughts on these offers.

On Thursday,

The Wrap

said Stern told his listeners he can't imagine going back to "that situation ... I can't even comprehend it. But the offers are out there. And it's very comforting to me because in the four years that we've been here I've seen (terrestrial) radio decay. There's not a lot of good performers. There's not a lot of people who can attract a big audience. And quite frankly (terrestrial) radio isn't all that exciting anymore. And all of these guys that have had conversations admit that."

The Wrap

said Stern claims that he didn't leak the stories about his return to FM, but said it would be in regular radio's best interest to do so as a slam to Sirius, which would have to shell out more money to keep him on board.

In light of all that, about 55.2% of

TheStreet

readers who took our survey say a company as versatile as Sirius XM can certainly continue successfully without Stern, even though it might take a small hit at the beginning. Meanwhile 44.8% of the poll-takers say that Stern is the face of Sirius XM, and helped make Sirius XM what it is today -- and that the company should do everything in its power to keep him around.

How will it all turn out? As they say in the business, stay tuned.

Click here for full results and analysis of our Sirius XM-Howard Stern poll

.

Berkshire Hathaway's

(BRK.B) - Get Report

$1.3 billion gamble

on

Swiss Re's

low-return, U.S. life reinsurance business will indeed pay off -- at least, that is, according to readers of

TheStreet.

More than 93% of the 1,648 poll-takers said that Berkshire's gamble on Swiss Re will ultimately reap rewards for Berkshire Hathaway. As usual, Buffet's approach to investing in undervalued businesses appeals to many investors.

Less than 7% of

TheStreet

users believe that Buffet made a bad call in purchasing a block of Swiss Re's underperforming U.S. life reinsurance business.

Click here for full results and analysis of our Berkshire Hathaway poll

.

When it comes to green energy, at least recently, it ain't easy being a solar company.

This past week was no exception to the selloff in the solar sector, with most of the public solar companies suffering weekly declines in share price, as the pressure from European governments to move harder and faster against what have been very lucrative solar incentive schemes has raised questions about the solar industry's financial model.

Italy was the latest European government to announce a somewhat unexpected hard cap on solar of 8 gigawatts between now and 2020. The 8-gigawatt hard cap, if passed into law by the Italian government, would force a re-evaluation of the growth prospects in what had expected to be one of the biggest national boons to solar capacity as other countries, like Germany, reduce their incentive schemes.

What's more, there are questions about the level of continued political support for an expensive form of electricity at a time when government budgets from Berlin to California are queing up in what looks like the modern economic state equivalent of a bread-line.

In light of all this, we asked

TheStreet

readers: Are the prospects for the long-term role of photovoltaic solar about to dim, or is solar poised to emerge from the current crisis as a stronger renewable energy player?

The response from

TheStreet

readers is unambiguous: they believe that the reports of solar's death are greatly exaggerated. Approximately 73% of our survey-takers said they believe that the solar doomsday scenario is overdone, and that the solar sector will come back strong.

Click here for full results and analysis of our solar sector poll

.

Zale

(ZLC)

is the most likely retailer to declare bankruptcy, according to the users of

TheStreet

.

The jeweler may need to seek bankruptcy protection by the end of the year, 44.6% of voters in our weekly poll said.

Earlier in the month, top executives, including its CEO, chief stores officer and chief merchandising officer, all resigned.

As the company looks for replacements, Zale President Theo Killiom will serve as interim CEO, while Gil Hollander, executive vice president and chief sourcing and supply chain officer, will also assume the role of chief merchandising officer. The resignations came on the heels of a 12% plunge in sales in December, as the jeweler was forced to cancel orders ahead of the holiday season.

Zale was also the center of a

Securities & Exchange Commission

investigation into financial irregularities in 2009.

Shares of Zale sank 7.2% to end the week at $2.18.

The next likely bankruptcy candidate, according to the poll, is

Blockbuster

(BBI) - Get Report

, with 33% of voters saying the company is in trouble.

Click here for full results and analysis of our retailer bankruptcy poll

.

General Motors'

CEO Ed Whitacre should forfeit a salary, according to

TheStreet

users.

In our weekly poll, 53.4% said Whitacre shouldn't take a salary, compared to the 46.6% said he deserved to be paid.

As GM attempts to dig out of its hole of debt, it apparently doesn't seem right to many that he take any more money out of the company. The counterargument: depriving Whitacre of a salary is a bad idea, as he is considered an experienced and efficient CEO.

Whitacre accepted the permanent position on Monday and also announced that GM will repay all of its outstanding debt -- which includes a $6.7 billion loan provided under the Troubled Asset Relief Program and $1.4 billion owed to Canada -- by June. The debt is not scheduled to come due until 2015, but Whitacre says he believes it is in the best interest of the company -- and its sales -- to free itself of that debt as soon as possible.

Whitacre's compensation is expected to be announced within the coming weeks.

Click here for full results and analysis of our GM CEO poll

.

When

U.S. Steel

(X) - Get Report

reported fourth-quarter results on Tuesday last week, the company

added a big dose of murk

to what investors and analysts had hoped to be a fairly clear narrative of recovery.

Up until that point,

the story was bullish

-- U.S. Steel shares reached a 52-week high in early January. A huge chunk of the stock was, however, in the hands of short sellers (as of Jan. 15, nearly 23% of the float).

The selloff in U.S. Steel shares probably made some of those shorts a good bit of money. Shares of the Pittsburgh manufacturing icon lost nearly 20% of their value last week; heavy trading in the name marked each session.

Also last Tuesday, the country's biggest steel producer, the scrap recycler

Nucor

(NUE) - Get Report

,

reported quarterly results

. They weren't nearly as bad as U.S. Steel's, but Nucor did indicate that the construction industry remains so distraught that any talk of full recovery is premature.

Given these mixed signals, we put it to readers of

TheStreet

: Was it time to ditch steel stocks, taking profits after the ride north to those 52-week highs? Or, conversely, did last week's nosedive present investors with an opportunity to double down on what appears to be a bet on the recovery of the U.S. economy? As a kind of control group, we threw in the third options: hold steady, do nothing, wait it out.

The results were clear: Readers of

TheStreet

-- or, at least the people who chose to take this poll -- are steel bugs. Just short of 56% of the approximately 2,500 survey-takers believe that buying steel stocks now is the smart move.

Click here for full results and analysis of our steel sector poll

.

-- Written by Joseph Woelfel and Ty Wenger in New York.

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