Joseph Battipaglia Earnings Quotations

Whenever companies come out with warnings, it reminds investors about the perilous nature of the earnings environment at the moment,

Oil prices at these levels are providing all kinds of dislocation issues for stocks. Earnings and the economic data are O.K., but with oil where it is, the market is unable to make a decision, long or short, and there's certainly no real catalyst for buying.

This earnings season, instead of getting a ripple effect on positive news, you're seeing that particular company's stock react, but very little spillover, like with IBM today. The negative news has tended to spill over to the rest of that sector, and in some cases, the broader market.

Investors are not put off now by the onslaught of disappointing earnings expectations. I think we're well through the inflection point where the market will continue to recover, even though earnings estimates will continue to be cut for the next several months.

But if you step back, it seems to me that we're still in the trading range we've been in for some time. There's still the push and pull between rising earnings and rising interest rates.

The economy has proved itself to be vibrant. Inflation is clearly in the bottle. The dollar is back on track. Japan is struggling again. The Europeans want to get out of recession. Rates don't go up in that environment. We've got a market that is going to go off of earnings with a lot of positive momentum and start to hit new highs.

The market's done really well considering it's September, ... I think that reflects the changing fundamentals and the fact that analysts are expecting better things from the earnings and therefore raising estimates and issuing upgrades, in particular, in the technology sector.

The market is being very rational where it's placing capital and the companies that can grow their unit volume, get revenues and earnings going at a 30 to 40 percent clip are being rewarded accordingly, ... I see nothing irrational about it.