Stocks give up gains, and three experts weigh in on state of the market

Stocks gave up gains late Tuesday, reversing a massive rally that had the Dow soaring more than 900 points at its intraday highs.

A number of experts say that this week's rally still doesn't mean stocks are in the clear.

"Mad Money" host Jim Cramer, for instance, thinks the rally itself may very well not hold.

"Just think about the last 500 Dow points [Monday]. I don't know. They were done in, what, about 30 minutes. That's not sustainable. There are people who are just anxious about taking something off the table because they've just seen a remarkable two-day bull market, and now they're ready to find out about … the various stages that we need to get out."

David Kostin, chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, also expressed that the bottom wasn't in for stocks, and that history may very well repeat itself to investors' chagrin.

"The way I think about this is [there's an asymmetry] in terms of downside risk towards a level in the S&P 500 of around 2,000, which is about 25%, and an upside of around 10% to a target at the end of the year of around 3,000. [That's not symmetrical] in terms of timing. I think the risk is a lot further towards the downside … I would just remind you that in [Q4 2008], there were many different rallies, they're called bear market rallies, some of which were almost 20% a couple of times, but the market did not bottom until March of 2009."

David Lebovitz, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said that the market is about to enter a transition phase.

"This has been a very headline-driven, heavy beta environment where markets have been swinging up and down multiple percentage points in a given day. … What the next couple of weeks are going to tell us, from an earnings standpoint, is going to shift that focus to more of micro and I think you're going to see greater dispersion, greater differentiation between winners and losers. And importantly, we're going to get a better sense of what the contours of this recession are going to look like."

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Source: cnbc.com