DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: My featured guest this morning is Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at First Albany. And, Hugh, in general we're looking at a pretty nasty earnings season. Do you think this is the worst?</s>HUGH JOHNSON, FIRST ALBANY: Well, you know the earnings are going to be dismal. They're going to be not only bad on a year-over- year basis, even worse than the first quarter, but think about it this way, estimates, of course as you know, have been revised downward so I think it's not going to be that bad a season from this point of view: 60 percent of the companies or so are going to announce earnings that are better than expected. That's in line with what we see just about every quarter about 10, 15, maybe 20 percent lower than expected, the rest in line. So on balance, I think you know what we have behind us now are really the ugly warnings. Now we can focus on the current earnings and to a greater extent what companies say about the third and fourth quarter. That's really the issue.</s>MARCHINI: Thus far, what I'm hearing about the third and fourth quarter is not necessarily good.</s>JOHNSON: No, but let's take a look at the ones that are coming out not only today, not only the non-technology ones today, Johnson & Johnson, General Motors, Eastman Kodak, etcetera, but also the really meaningful ones in the technology sector. Let's take a look at IBM, EMC, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. That will really tell you about what's going on in technology, whether we're seeing any signs of stability in spending that gives us that light at the end of the tunnel. I think you're going to see that, but we'll wait and see.</s>MARCHINI: Hugh Johnson, back to you shortly. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Hugh Johnson of First Albany: Low Earnings Nearing End