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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (63864)	7/2/1999 10:18:00 AM
From: Mike M2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Wayne, I don't know about IBES or First Call but I would suspect it is a combination of over optimism and operating earnings. Reported earnings include extraordinary write-offs while operating earnings exclude write-offs and INTEREST EXPENSE. The June Richebacher Letter cites an article by the Wall St. Journal for 665 of the companies that make up the US component of the Dow Jones Global Indexes , REPORTED earnings declined 4% in 1Q99 from year ago levels but operating income rose 9.6%. Reported income for consumer cyclicals fell 45% ( not a typo) while operating income rose 15% . Gee no wonder Wall St likes to look at operating earnings. As MB would say Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. -g- All I can say is HO HO HO -g- The Richebacher Letter 1217 St Paul St Baltimore, MD 21202 Mike

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (63864)	7/2/1999 11:08:00 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Wayne, I don't know. I know they are always wrong to the upside, but I have no idea why they should be different unless they have a different universe of companies or contributors.

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (63864)	7/2/1999 11:38:00 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Respond to of 132070

Wayne - (...Do you have any idea why the IBES estimate and the First Call estimate for S&P500 earnings are so far apart on a consistent basis?...) If you assume that the S&P500 earnings estimates are just aggregations of the individual company earnings, the faults in those just carry over. If you look at an individual company that has 10 analysts and pre-announces a shortfall, no more than half of the estimates will be downgraded in a timely manner. This is partially due to laziness of the analysts and partially due to analysts changing firms or being terminated. Thus at any one point in time, some of the individual estimates are just dead historical numbers. The difference between First Call, Zacks, or IBES may just depend on how often and how well they weed their database. If the trend is down, then the most aggressive weeder will have the lowest consensus number. Regards, Don