Wall St.: Moment of truth Now that 3Q earnings are finally here, analysts hope stocks have bottomed October 8, 2000: 7:00 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (CNNfn) - For five long weeks, corporate earnings warnings have plagued Wall Street, sending major stock indexes tumbling.

Now comes the moment of truth. Companies this week begin posting results for the July-September period in earnest. And analysts will be closely watching whether actual earnings -- those things that stocks prices are supposedly based on -- can lift a market in negative territory for the year.

"The market has got to find a catalyst," said Barry Hyman, chief investment strategist at Weatherly Securities. "The only catalyst out there is earnings."

It would be about time. U.S. stocks fell Friday, capping a fifth week of declines. The Dow Jones industrial average shed 0.5 percent on the week, while the Nasdaq composite index lost 8.5 percent over the last five days. And the S&P 500 slid 1.9 percent on the week. With all three indexes down since January, this year, if it ended now, would be the worst year in the markets since 1990.

The losses come amid a blitz of negative financial news. At least 60 companies warned last week that financial results would come in lower-than expected. Dell Computer (DELL: Research, Estimates), Office Max (OMX: Research, Estimates), and Xerox (XRX: Research, Estimates) were among the most prominent.

Worries about third-quarter earnings have been hurting the market since early September. Technology stocks, among the markets most expensive shares, have suffered the most.

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/10/08/markets/sun_lookahead/

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 09, 2000

Answers

Moment of truth is right. That's what I've got it figured down to: this coming week. We haven't even had earnings warnings yet from a lot of the airlines and railroads, heavily fuel-intensive, who are bound to come in with sour 3rd quarter reports.

-- JackW (jpayne@webtv.net), October 09, 2000.

And, how about all the other industries highly reliant on fuel, like trucking, other transportation, utilities, and mining operations? Those high-flying fuel costs over the summmer had to have an adverse effect on their bottom lines.

I don't think the blood-letting has hardly started yet.

-- Billiver (billiver@aol.com), October 09, 2000.