It's semiconductors that are driving better-than-normal growth in the technology sector as a whole. |
Last year, 43 percent of the negative pre-announcements came after Jan. 1, so there will be a ton more. |
Let's keep this in perspective. |
Maybe a third [reason] is the technology cycle. |
No matter how you slice it, it's a big increase and a positive. |
Now the big question is what the slope of recovery is going to be. I'm a little afraid it will be more modest than most of what the investment community expects. |
Now we'll see if this time it's going to be different. |
Of the 59 percent of the S&P 500 that has reported, earnings are down 18.1 percent. If we add that number to estimates for the rest, we're down 22.2 percent from last year. |
On the earnings front, there's not much on the positive side. ...The fourth quarter is going to be a disaster. |
Overall, the quarter is going to be excellent. We think it will match the 23.6 percent earnings growth for the first quarter, which was the highest we'd seen since back in the fourth quarter of 1993. It's going to be a very good quarter for earnings despite all the pessimism here during the peak time of pre-announcements. But pre-announcements are running a little bit less negative than they usually do so I think it's a bit of an over-reaction. |
Quarterly earnings are still made up to be too important, in my judgment. There's too much focus on the short term by far. |
Right now is not the acid test. The [banking/research] conflict isn't there. But it will come back. |
Sure there are some things that need correcting. But the basic way we've been calculating earnings is still valid. |
The big thing hanging over the market is what kind of growth we're going to see in the second half of the year. |
The charge signifies that AOL used its highly inflated stock to purchase hard assets. |