By Rick Glaze

The stock indexes turned in another down week as Alan Greenspan’s housing comments drove stocks down on Friday.

Substantial buying programs tried to rally the market on Friday but were unsuccessful. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.5 percent for the week while the Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq were lower by 1.2 and 0.7 percent respectively.

Trading volume was below average. The direction of the market is confirmed if volume increases. Therefore, lower volume reduces the impact of the decline in the eyes of some market traders.

The leading index since 2003 has been small cap stocks. That index, the S&P 600, fell 0.9 percent for the week. The “cap” designation is an abbreviation for “capitalization.” To determine this valuation, take the number of shares a company has outstanding and multiply it by the price of the stock.

For example, one million shares times a $50 stock price gives the company a $50 million capitalization. Although the numbers vary among analysts, generally small cap are companies with a market cap under $1 billion and midcap are below $200 billion.

The summer is frequently cause for a slowdown in the market and some pundits believe the strong rally since April needs to consolidate before moving higher in the fourth quarter. Although inventories of oil are at five-year highs, storms in the gulf have again spooked the oil markets and a barrel of oil touched $70 briefly on Monday of this week.

Rick Glaze is the president of Glaze Capital Management Inc. of Los Altos and is a registered representative offering securities through First Allied Securities Inc.