[Steven W.]

Another hint - instead of macroizing these kinds of wide area reports you should focus on earnings power for individual companies of choice, many of which, over the past days, have demonstrated they're continuing to produce good profits. In other words, seperate the wheat from the chaffe, unless your objective is gloom & doom style pump & dump.

[MonroeDNA]

Go here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/finduser

Type in Starwind, and search. You will find a bunch of negative economic postings by this person.

"Doom & Gloom Pump and Dump" is absolutely correct.

There are a small handful of Freepers who do this continuously. Willie Green and Sarcasm are two more. Sometimes I get the feeling that there are only one or two, with a hidden agenda, and multiple "sleeper freeper" accounts & names.

[JNB]

Good profits? Revenue growth is down, in the case of IBM, its profits were down and its revenue growth only grew because it bought out Price Waterhouse. Profits have been maintained only because of cost cutting, and cost cutting only results usually in one time gains. As for the markets themselves, who would have ever though the VIX would be below 25 with the DOW down in the 8300 range, and the VXN down to mid 30s with the Nasdaq still in the low 1400s, the lowest its been since the peak of the bubble.