Word: fourthly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That would spell trouble for stocks were it not for high investor confidence that a blockbuster fourth quarter is about to unfold. "Earnings on a year-over-year basis are expected to more than double in the fourth quarter," says Van Dijk, thanks largely to big recovery in the financial sector. In the final quarter of 2008 AIG imploded, losing $38 billion. With that ball of lead no longer weighing down the financial group average, earnings will surge. (See pictures of the top 10 scared stock traders...
...financial group's improvement can be a bit tricky since going from a loss to a profit isn't truly a percentage improvement. "When you cross over zero, comparisons get weird," says Van Dijk. Even so, the financial group's turnaround - it should log $15 billion or more in fourth-quarter profit - will give a strong boost to the S&P 500 composite earnings. The S&P will also be boosted by a famous departure: "GM was losing billions last year, but it's no longer in the S&P," observes Van Dijk...
...Those accounting tweaks make the 2009 fourth quarter's huge expected gain a bit less meaningful, but it's still a factor in the market's future. "Even though a child can figure out that the year-over-year numbers are going to surge from a depressed base of a year ago, the fact that some market makers feel it is important must make it important," noted strategist David Rosenberg at wealth manager Gluskin Sheff in a Monday report to clients. Such is the power of market psychology...
...patch of garden in troubled Yala is the brainchild of the Fourth Army Region Commander Lieut. General Pichet Wisaijorn, who is the military officer in charge of Thailand's far south. The area was once a Malay Muslim sultanate, but Thailand, then known as Siam, annexed the region in the early 20th century. Since then some Muslim residents, who make up roughly 80% of the local population, have complained of feeling like second-class citizens in what elsewhere is a predominantly Buddhist land. Sporadic violence in the deep south bloomed into a full-scale insurgency in 2004. Overtly Buddhist targets...
...Pichet dismisses allegations that his men might be part of the problem in Thailand's south. When asked about the Amnesty International report released earlier this year documenting systematic military abuse of local civilians, the Fourth Army commander first says he has never heard of the report, then switches tactics and claims that the group's researchers didn't spend much time in the south collecting their information. Pichet acknowledges that the hearts and minds of suspicious Muslim villagers can't be won overnight. But the country still faces a tough battle in its bloody south, no matter how impressively...