Financial Printing -- Bulls in a Bear Market

To that end, Trayvick offers several positive points as examples:

* On the IPO front, filings were up more than 121 percent in the third quarter of 2003 compared to the same period in 2002. In the third quarter of 2003 there were 51 IPOs, compared to 29 for the first half of 2003.

* In the third quarter, mergers and acquisitions (S-4) were up more than 56 percent compared to the similar period in 2002. There were 211 mergers and acquisitions in the third quarter, versus 296 for the entire first half.