Bulls See Through the European Clouds
Updated from 5 a.m. EDT
NEW YORK (
) -- Europe, Europe, Europe. It's a lovely place to live, work and visit, but a bad place for a debt crisis.
It's also what remains foremost in the minds of many U.S. stock market investors who believe the
sovereign debt risk crisis throughout Europe
could spread and lead to a worldwide economic slowdown.
Investors in our latest sentiment survey, however, are looking past the problems across the Atlantic and instead mostly see a positive week ahead for Wall Street.
As of 7 a.m. Monday, poll participants who were bullish racked up 47%, or 943 votes out of a total 2,005 cast in TheStreet.com's RealMoney Barometer Poll. Bears scored 790 votes, or 39.4% of the total, while survey-takers who were neutral racked up 272 votes, or 13.6%.
European markets were lower Monday with Britain's FTSE 100 down 0.6%, Germany's DAX index down by 1.4% and France's CAC-40 falling 0.6%.
China led Asia mostly higher with the Shanghai Composite gaining 3.5%. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 0.6%, while the Nikkei 225 stock average in Japan fell 0.3%.
Premarket futures in the U.S. suggested stocks would open to the downside Monday.
In the U.S. last week, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
ended the week 4% lower, while the
S&P 500
TheStreet Recommends
and
Nasdaq
declined 4.2% and 5%, respectively. The S&P 500 dipped into correction territory on Thursday when it fell more than 10% from its highs in April but rebounded Friday with a gain of 1.5%.
Commercial banks was seen by poll participants as the sector most likely to rise
and
fall this week. Bank stocks such as
Bank of America
(SYMBOL)
,
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) - Get JPMorgan Chase & Co. Report
and
Citigroup
(C) - Get Citigroup Inc. Report
rose strongly Friday on the news that the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would increase the policing of banks but didn't include a stronger ban on banks trading their own accounts.
And as earnings season winds down, reports are expected this week from retailers
Costco
(COST) - Get Costco Wholesale Corporation Report
and
Tiffany
(TIF) - Get Tiffany & Co. Report
, and homebuilder
Toll Brothers
(TOLL)
.
> > Bull or Bear? Vote in Our Poll
The poll closes at 9:15 a.m.
Here's a wrap-up of our other polls:
Netflix
(NFLX) - Get Netflix, Inc. Report
won't be subsumed by
Amazon
(AMZN) - Get Amazon.com, Inc. Report
, according to
TheStreet's
latest poll, despite a whole lot of recent scuttlebutt to that effect.
Rumors of a potential takeover of the DVD-by-mail company surfaced last week, sending the stock up 10%. Still, a whopping 73% of voters responded that they don't foresee an Amazon deal. Only 27% of
TheStreet
readers said a buyout is likely.
>>Click here for full results and analysis of our Netflix-Amazon merger poll
Meanwhile, as euro fears hit the global markets, it seems increasingly apparent that even the staple consumer stocks will be affected, given the exposure that many have to the region.
And so this week we reached out to
TheStreet
users and asked which consumer goods stock they thought would take the worse hit from the euro crisis:
P&G
(PG) - Get Procter & Gamble Company Report
,
J&J
(JNJ) - Get Johnson & Johnson Report
,
Kimberly-Clark
(KMB) - Get Kimberly-Clark Corporation Report
,
Colgate-Palmolive
(CL) - Get Colgate-Palmolive Company Report
or
Coca-Cola
(KO) - Get Coca-Cola Company Report
?
According to the results, 30.2% of those surveyed felt that Coca-Cola stock would take the hardest hit from the euro anxiety.
>>Click here for full results and analysis of our euro impact poll
-- Written by Joseph Woelfel and Ty Wenger in New York.
