Wall Street's Third-Quarter Earnings. Is it a Turning Point or Nothing at All? By Marcus Goodwin, The Psychic Investor Wednesday, October 11, 2000 The third-quarter earnings reporting season is now fully underway. And most of the important pre-season shortcomings have been declared. Thus far, Wall Street has reacted ruthlessly to the so-called pre-announcements, sending household names from Intel (INTC), to Dell (DELL), from Apple (AAPL) to priceline.com (PCLN), from Oracle (ORCL) to CMGI Inc. (CMGI) racing billions of dollars lower. Even companies like Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), whom have met their expected earnings, got slammed. Tech stocks and other companies issue these warnings to dull the impact of their upcoming shortfalls. This time, they tried desperately, and they failed. This is one of the most essential reporting events in recent history -- because it literally implicates the fate of the new economy. Investors are nervous about the levels of valuation in the stock market, mostly in the tech sector. A slowdown in the computer and technology industries would indeed mean an across-the-board slowdown for the Internet financial system. And, an across-the-board slowdown would indicate the beginning of a bear market. Everyone wonders, "Is the party really over? Did I miss the boat? Or is it just another episode of panic selling? Where is the Nasdaq bottom? Is this really the beginning of a major economic recession? Will my stocks continue to tank? Or, is this just the biggest sale of the century!" As this psychic sees it -- and based on the abundance of stocks in the red on the screen in front of me; stocks that are currently plummeting below their 2-year lows -- investor's jitters are indeed merited. Experts who track earnings declare almost every earnings season turns out to be significantly better than expected. Brokerage-firm industry analysts expect the results of this third-quarter to come in about 15% higher than the year-ago quarter's. But unfortunately, this does not substantiate a continuation of the incredible surges in income these companies experienced throughout the roaring bull market of the past decade. The tech companies have driven this bull market, and if they fail, then the market will fail too, collectively. And if you scroll back the pages of time -- perhaps 40 years -- you realize that 99% of the aggressively traded companies of that era are completely gone. They're completely out of business. And one would not have to be a market expert, or rocket scientist, to realize that history tends to repeat itself. More specifically, history tends to repeat itself every 40 years. And as Gore and Bush continue their politic debate, both with exaggerated promises of higher-than-thou insight, and offer the country their versions of the supreme cure-all -- and skate over the current & shocking state of the stock market -- we can only hope that history remains kind to us. And that with this turning point, we might remain calm, cool, and collected.