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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Big Bucks who wrote (20471)	6/16/1998 11:19:00 PM
From: Teri Skogerboe	Respond to of 70976

BB, GM, Kind of reminds me of this thread, widely divergent views. <<snippet from a Bloomberg article, 16 Jun 98>> Coca-Cola, which gets 80 percent of its profits from outside the U.S., lost 5/16 to 79. Merrill Lynch analyst Douglas M. Lane cut his estimate for the company's earnings per share this year to $1.60 from $1.62 and lowered his 1999 estimate to $1.80-$1.85 from $1.90. The dollar traded at 143.17 yen, after yesterday reaching 146.78, its highest level since Aug. 22, 1990. As analysts reduce their earnings estimates, stocks will fall further, Campbell and others say. "Earnings are probably going to be hurt by the Asian crisis," said Paul L. Hennessey, head of trading at Boston Partners Asset Management LP, which manages $16 billion. ''How can this market continue to move up when earnings are coming down?'' Campbell's firm recently bought shares of office furniture maker Herman Miller Inc. A Commerce Department report showed that housing starts unexpectedly fell in May, a sign that the economy may be slowing. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said last week that U.S. economic growth should slow in the months ahead and inflation probably will stay low, which suggests that the Fed will extend its bet that no interest-rate increase is needed in the months ahead. A key inflation indicator, consumer prices in May, came in about as expected today. Interest-Rate Cushion Stocks should recover unless interest rates rise, analysts said. Bonds are the cushion, and it would be almost unprecedented for stocks to collapse without a similar trend in the bond market,'' Stephen Shobin, Lehman Brothers Inc.'s technical analyst, said in a report to clients. Low rates are no consolation, because they might be signaling that the economy is slowing so much that profits will suffer, said Peter Cardillo, director of research at Westfalia Investments, a New York brokerage. ''If you were stagnant in your earnings growth, the market could not sustain this high level'' no matter how low rates are, he said. Movers Manpower Inc. fell 10 9/16 to 27 5/8 after the U.S.'s largest temporary-employment company said it expects second- quarter earnings to fall below last year's because of rising operating costs worldwide and higher social security costs in France. Springs Industries Inc. fell 7 1/2 to 48 3/4 after the home- furnishings maker said second-quarter earnings will be less than half of last year's 81 cents a diluted share before unusual items, because of an expected charge of 24 cents from amounts owned by customers of its window-fashions business. U.S. Rentals Inc. rose 3 1/16 to 33 1/4 after it agreed to be acquired by its rival, United Rentals Inc., for $1.24 billion in stock and assumed debt to form the largest equipment-rental company in North America. United Rentals will pay $32.12 in stock for each U.S. Rentals share. 16:22:56 06/16/1998 Any redistribution of Bloomberg content, including by framing or similiar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Bloomberg L.P. Any reference to the material must be properly attributed to Bloomberg News. -----