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To: Lucretius who wrote (14767)	1/6/1999 3:25:00 PM
From: yard_man	Respond to of 86076

Seconded and passed ... biz.yahoo.com In US stocks surge, buyers seen as half-cocked By Jennifer Shaw NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks have resumed their record-shattering surge in apparent defiance of sluggish corporate profits and a pile of earnings warnings from high profile companies. The rationale, Wall Street analysts said, is that the fourth quarter profit picture, while unpleasant, is old news the market confronted long ago and is already looking past. ''Fourth quarter earnings are not going to be good, but 1998 is finished and investors are not going to get caught in it,'' said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer of First Albany Corp. ''Investors are already looking ahead to the third and fourth quarters of 1999.'' Even so, the weak spell has been noteworthy in several respects, particularly in the sheer number of profit warnings. ''It seems clear that Q4 1998 will set a new record for negative pre-announcements,'' First Call research director Chuck Hill said in a report issued Tuesday. First Call tallied the total negative pre-announcements at at 416, already ahead of the 380 for the entire Q4 1997 season. The previous record was 526 warnings in the third quarter of 1998. That quarter was also the first in which earnings at Standard & Poor's 500 companies fell in seven years. Few on Wall Street expect booming growth in the fourth quarter. PaineWebber strategist Edward Kerschner is looking for earnings among S&P 500 companies to be up 3 percent in the fourth quarter, according to a report issued this week. Large cap stocks have been hard hit. According to the First Call analysts, there have been 82 negative fourth quarter statements from S&P 500 companies to date, compared with 27 in the fourth quarter of 1997 and 53 in the third quarter of 1998. And although the Dow Jones industrial average gained 16.1 percent in 1998, propelled by a fourth quarter rally, more than a quarter of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones industrial average, including Coca-Cola Co (NYSE:KO - news), Boeing Co (NYSE:BA - news) and Chevron Corp (NYSE:CHV - news), predicted a fourth-quarter shortfall versus profit expectations. With the earnings reporting season about to start, some expect the worst has passed. ''We've seen a lot of pre-announcements. I don't think you will see a lot more,'' said Bryan Piskorowski, market analyst at Prudential Securities. For many, as long as companies keep their word, short periods of weak earnings are tolerable. ''For the most part, we're going to see earnings come in on projection, going forward 1-1/2 to 2 percent,'' said Peter Cardillo, director of research at Westfalia Investments. ''I don't think its going to be damaging to the market because people are looking ahead.''