Weekly Wrap

Happy St. Patrick's Day. If you have been watching the market at all this week, you might want to start consuming as many green beers as you can get your hands on. It was horrible. Not one ounce of Irish Luck to be found anywhere. They've even cancelled St. Patrick's Day festivities in Dublin!

Huh? Okay, the cancellations are not due to the U.S. Stock Market, but because of the Foot-and-Mouth disease scare that has taken its toll on all of Europe. While the disease doesn't affect humans, it's highly contagious between animals and can result in death for very young or old animals. It can be carried on shoes and luggage, which explains the cancellation of big events that would have people traveling across countries wearing shoes and carrying baggage. Some airports are scraping British visitors shoe soles* with disinfectant. And to think we're still reeling from the whole Mad Cow's disease, what next?

Speaking of Mad Cow, I'm going crazy. (Get your green beer front and center.) It was the second worst week EVER in the history of the Dow. I said EVER. It lost more than 1000 points in the week. Monday it was down 400, Wednesday it was down 300, and Friday it dropped another 200. (The worst week in the history of the Dow was the first week of April last year.)

The Federal Reserve hopefully will try and boost the market next week by lowering interest rates. I hope I hope. The word is that Mr. Greenspan will either lower them by at least a half a point, and maybe even up to three-quarters of a point. Though investors knew this would be coming, it didn't help their confidence in the whole market.

There really wasn't any good news at all this week except that Adobe (ADBE) met analysts' lowered expectations. I only added that one bit of good news because I know Club Chick owns the stock. If I know the Chickies in that group, any reason to tip a beverage, green or otherwise, they'll take it.

Line up three or four malt liquors for this next bit of news...

Compaq Computer Corp. (CPQ) announced this week that they have lowered their first quarter's earnings projections. Like that isn't bad enough for the company, they were also forced to layoff 5,000 people... which amounts to 7% of their employees.

Ditto for Intel (INTC), though they haven't announced the cutting of their workforce... yet.

Intuit (INTU), more of the same.

Let's just say that if you're a technology company, or have anything to do with technology, you're going to be announcing some slowdowns. Then a few months later you will be announcing your lowered earnings. I'm getting tired of reporting all of these companies lowered estimates and earnings; it drives me to drink. Just keep them lumped into the "big economic slowdown" group which filters into all the other major industries. Proof is in the Dow pudding... down more than 7% for the week. The Nasdaq was down another 5%.

For instance, my favorite newspaper, USA Today, announced that their ad revenues dropped 19% for this past month. Gannett Co. (GCI), the largest US newspaper publisher owning 99 newspapers and 22 television stations, announced that overall their advertising revenue was down 4% for February, with USA Today's decline being the worst. Newspaper ads account for two-thirds of their revenue. This is the second month in a row that their ad revenue has been on the decline. No word on whether they will meet their first quarter's earnings, but I think the writing is on the front page. (See, it's not only happening to Yahoo.)

It's not easy being green this week if you're the Busch family of the famous Budweiser frog ad-campaign. Anheuser-Busch (BUD) might have to be handing over some of those greenbacks as they are being sued by the family of former Major League Baseball player, Roger Maris. As part of Maris' 1968 baseball contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, Anheuser-Busch (Cardinals former owner) gave Maris the exclusive distributorship rights in certain Florida areas. After Maris died in 1985, the family claims Anheuser-Busch conspired and eventually stole the profitable distributorships from them.

Poor Busch family, if it isn't enough that they're being sued, even you have turned against them. I'm watching you. What are you doing? Watching the market and drinking an import? A green import? Whasssuuup?

What the heck, pass one over.

In other sporting bad news, the Calgary Flames, of the NHL, fired their head coach, my husband's head coach. The Flames are not going to make the playoffs for the fifth year in a row, so someone had to go. The new head coach isn't having any better luck, and he's even Irish... they've lost the first two under Greg Gilbert.

I have more than one reason tonight to start drinking green beer.

Chick Karin

*Say "British visitors shoe sales" three times. It's not possible.

Closing Market Numbers