Fiscal cliff, not Greece major concern for market: Ghriskey

Tim Ghriskey, CIO, Solaris Asset Management believes the US market at the moment is hanging on to every word coming on the fiscal cliff. However, he is hopeful of arriving at a solution to the big problem facing the US economy.

Ghriskey further added that though Greece was a major concern, in the absence of any conclusion to its woes, the focus has again shifted to the US fiscal cliff.

Here is the edited transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18.

Q: In lieu of what Ben Bernanke say how are you viewing the action today?

A: We are not seeing a lot today. This is almost a market holiday, a lot of people travel on the day before Thanksgiving in the US and we are seeing a lot of market participants not in the market today. It is a full day in the market though, so we will see prints up till 4 o'clock. It is a flat day here.

Yesterday a lot of volatility, a little bit of scare was created around midday by Bernanke's statements and we saw the market rally back to a more or less flat day. We are seeing a continuation of that. This is a market that is hanging on every word coming out of Washington about the fiscal cliff.

Q: What really are the over hangs on the market, of course as you said tomorrow is Thanksgiving, it is a market holiday so some amount of momentum loss as far as the index action goes but, how big a concern is Greece at this point and of course there is the issue of fiscal cliff that global markets are dealing with?

A: The fiscal cliff is really the big one out there and although we agree that eventually we are going to get a resolution, we don't know what that resolution is going to be. Certainly, it is not going to be as draconian as what's in place in law right now, the total exploration of the Bush tax cuts.

But, will it still be enough of a tax increase and a spending decrease to impact the economy significantly? There is concern about that certainly. That’s the major focus. We have seen Greece become more of an issue here in the last several weeks but, they failed to reach a deal so far with international vendors and there is another meeting on Monday.

We think eventually this does get resolved but, it is not going to be an easy process in terms of dealing with Greece and the European Union in general.

Q: What really are the near term triggers till December 31 which is the deadline for the fiscal cliff? We had some positive data but that has not really improved sentiments to a certain extent. In fact as we speak, we see the S&P falling into negative territory.

A: Next week is a big week for economic data. We have got global orders on Monday, there is a lot of focus on that because it has been the industrial side of the US that has been weak and then we have new home sales on Wednesday. We see GDP data, the second estimate, second revision on Thursday and then personal income, personal spending on Friday. So it is a big economic week.

Earnings are pretty much out of the way here. There will be focus on economics but the main focus is going to be hanging on every word that comes out of Washington. Whether it is favourable in terms of the parties working together or the negative in terms of the parties being far apart, we think we are going to see a lot of debate here between now and the year end, if not into the New Year.