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Strategies & Market Trends : Moufassa's Lair -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: moufassa7 who wrote (12699)	4/15/2003 6:16:43 PM
From: James C. Mc Gowan	Respond to of 13660

Yep, we get gappo tomorrow on these big tech earnings. It occurs to me that the game is 'Lowered Expectations', IOW, both MSFT/INTC talk poor mouth when eps are announced, prior quarter, and during the quarter, updates emphasize weakness. Analyst's, in turn, reduce estimates, and, viola!, earnings announcements come in 'better than expected', and we get a 'feel good ramp'. In fact, reviewing MSFT nice quarter results, we see they are predicting revenues AND profits for next quarter and annual that are LOWER than current consensus, so , same old, same old. INTC announced that they will be continuing to 'modestly' reduce head count, after thousands of layoffs in past year. What I see is numbers that are not higher, and in some important ways, are lower than year-over-year quarter comparisons. Not to be pessimistic, because we could use all the optimism we can get, as long as it is reflective of an actual increase in business. The AH market is speaking loud and clear, whatever that means, and now we have some option MM's that will have to do some last minute hedging to avoid their own Pain experience. Or, by tomorrow, we would get 'notes of caution' from the analysts whose employers have the most to lose, on these big tech earnings. Take away the pre-earnings 'poor mouthing' and the post earnings release "better than expected" hype, and you have flat earnings to be factored in at some point. INTC capex holding, but what about 'revisions' downward, later on, like they did last year? Still lower highs, let's see how this one goes. James