SUSIE GHARIB: Wall Street got pelted by warnings today. Intel warned after the closing bell, and Motorola before the opening bell. The Motorola announcement dragged down stocks today, and the Intel news could be a negative for trading tomorrow. The Dow and the NASDAQ both lost around 45 points. Here's the story: Intel said that revenue in the fourth quarter will be flat. It had expected it to be up 4 to 8 percent, compared to the third quarter. It made no change in earnings. Analysts are still expecting 42 cents a share. Now as for Motorola, it said it will miss its fourth quarter earnings estimate, which it lowered once before in October. Motorola now expects earnings of only 15 cents a share; now, that is far below 27 cents that Wall Street was looking for. But some analysts are still confident about Motorola's future.

DAVE POWERS, TECHNOLOGY ANALYST, EDWARD JONES: In the near term, they clearly have to execute better in the cell phone business. They need to get the right models out in the marketplace, and at the right cost structure, to compete effectively with the large players in the industry, like Nokia (NOK). Once they do that, I think investors will start to regain some confidence in the company.

GHARIB: All right. Well, Intel and Motorola join a growing number of companies warning that their quarterly numbers will fall short of forecasts. Suzanne Pratt takes a look at what this means for Wall Street.

SUZANNE PRATT, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: It will be three more weeks before the books close on the fourth quarter; yet, Wall Street is already fretting about how the numbers will shape up. The anxiety is being fueled by earnings warnings, from high-profile names such as Intel and Motorola, both of which issued red flags today. According to First Call, which tracks earnings estimates, there's good reason for investors to worry. So far, earnings pre- announcements for the fourth quarter are running significantly ahead of fourth quarter '99. And already, there are 47 percent more negative pre-announcements than last year. First Call blames the increase in part, on the SEC's new full disclosure regulations, but it says the slowing economy is the bigger culprit.

CHUCK HILL, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, FIRST CALL: I would think that the greater reason is the environment we're in, and the way things are deteriorating so rapidly.

PRATT: The large number of warnings has led Wall Street analysts to drastically cut their fourth quarter numbers. Right now, estimates for fourth quarter earnings growth for the S&P 500 are at 9 percent, down sharply from earlier this year. And First Call says, the number is likely to drop even lower.

HILL: I think we're destined for something in the high single-digit area in terms of percent growth, but whether it's going to be seven or nine or whatever, hard to tell at this point.

PRATT: Many experts say the stock market has barely begun to factor in the disappointing fourth quarter numbers. But others say, stocks are a leading indicator, and declining profit growth is already included in most valuations.

JOSEPH MCALINDEN, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, MSDW ADVISORS: I think the biggest force behind the decline that we've had in the year 2000 in stock prices, especially in the technology sector, has been the lowering of earnings expectations and the realization that trees don't grow to the sky.

PRATT: As for the quality of earnings next year, experts say the first quarter will probably see profit growth in the mid to low single-digits. The real issue is whether second quarter 2001 numbers drop to low single-digits, or head into negative territory- something First Call says is a real possibility. Suzanne Pratt, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.

Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast.  The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2000 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc.

SUSIE GHARIB: It is now a whole month since election day and the nation and financial markets are still waiting to find out who the next president will be. Today, Florida's Supreme Court heard arguments in what many view as Vice President Gore's last chance to overturn the certification of the state's 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush. From Washington, Stephanie Woods has the latest.

FLORIDA SUPREME COURT CLERK: Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye!

STEPHANIE WOODS, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Attorneys for Vice President Gore and Governor Bush were back before the Florida Supreme Court today. Arguments by Gore's attorney that the disputed ballots must be manually counted were met with questions about why not all the Florida ballots would have to be recounted.

R. FRED LEWIS, JUSTICE, FLORIDA SUPREME COURT: If the category exists, it seems as though it must exist statewide. If we have under votes in one location and those are considered, then you've demonstrated that there's legal votes that have not been counted.

WOODS: The attorney for Governor Bush was also peppered with questions about whether the lower court judge should have examined the disputed ballots.

BARBARA PARIENTE, JUSTICE, FLORIDA SUPREME COURT: Are you really saying that the votes, the 9,000 votes in Dade County should not be looked at in a contest action?

WOODS: The Justices also questioned the time to recount the Florida ballots before the states electors are chosen.

CHARLES T. WELLS, CHIEF JUSTICE, FLORIDA SUPREME COURT: All of these contests have to be concluded, as you told me before, when we were here before, by December the 12th and we don't have a remedy here that can do that by December the 12th.

WOODS: Many legal analysts believe how the Florida Supreme Court rules on this case will determine the final outcome of the presidential election. But Gore's lawyers aren't certain this will be the end.

DAVID BOIES, GORE CAMPAIGN ATTORNEY: I wouldn't want to say that it is the end of the line because there are things the court could do like, for example, directing that the count take place in another forum like the Circuit Court.

WOODS: More than 30 other challenges have been filed. But the financial markets are counting on a Bush victory and changed their focus away from the legal wrangling.

LESLIE ALPERSTEIN, PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON ANALYSIS: I believe it stopped impacting the market, for the most part, a couple of weeks ago when it became apparent that the economy was really unraveling.

WOODS: Unraveling the legal arguments is what the Florida Supreme Court will do now. The Court is not expected to take long to come to a decision. Stephanie Woods, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.

Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast.  The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2000 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc.

12/07/00:Prime Mover: Guy Kawasaki, Chmn. & CEO, Garage.com

SUSIE GHARIB:We hear so many stories of how entrepreneurs got their start in their garage and now there's a dot.com that's formalizing that process. It's called Garage.com. The CEO is Guy Kawasaki, formerly of Apple Computer (AAPL), which a long time ago got its start in a garage. The company serves as a middleman hooking up entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and individual investors online. Since its first funding transaction in 1999, Garage.com has helped over 60 high tech startups, raising more than $200 million in venture capital. The privately held Silicon Valley firm has offices in the U.S., Israeli and London. In tonight's prime movers segment, Donald van de Mark of Myprimetime.com asks Kawasaki how many deals are getting done.

GUY KAWASAKI, CHMN. & CEO, GARAGE.COM: The pace of deal filling is definitely down. It is down because the people who were in large consulting firms or banks, they had clever ideas and a clever domain name and they thought, well, I'll whip out 20 Power Point slides and I'll raise five million bucks and give it a shot. All those people are disappearing. It used to be that you got the money and you eventually figured out the business model. That's not the case anymore. Now you figure out the business model, then you might get the money. So it's exactly reversed.

DONALD VAN DE MARK, MYPRIMETIME.COM: Do you think that there will also be some good companies that don't get funded?

KAWASAKI: I happen to be in this karmicforce of good companies that if you are a good company, you do get funded somehow, some way. So, a good company always gets funded. It can take longer, it can be harder, but they do get funded.

VAN DE MARK: So you coach entrepreneurs and then open doors for them to even bigger money?

KAWASAKI: We coach them, we beat them up, we refine their business model, their investor relation skills, their presentation skills. We also help do a lot of recruiting for their management staff. Basically we do anything it takes to get them funded. We also help them find their first customers and their first partners.

VAN DE MARK: Do you think that the easy money, when it comes to the Internet, has already been made?

KAWASAKI: I think that the first cycle of the easy money has already been made, but there will be a good five or six more cycles like this. The Internet, this new economy is just barely getting started. I would liken it to a trip across America, you know, coming from a foreign land. Right now the Internet has landed on Ellis Island, euphoria, you know, high valuations, everything gets funded. And now it's about Manhattan, but it still hasn't left New York.

VAN DE MARK: A lot of dumb ideas have obviously been funded, not only by venture capitalists, but also even in the public stock market. How could so many dumb ideas have been funded?

KAWASAKI: Well, I don't think investors are dumb. You can get caught in the euphoria. You can get caught in sort of this, you know, as they say, the rising tide floats all boats or maybe more accurately in a tornado even a turkey can fly. We were definitely in a tornado, so some turkeys flew.

VAN DE MARK: When you value a young company, how do you assess that value?

KAWASAKI: Typically we assess three things. There's the team, there's the technology and there's the market. Now, having said that, you would think, oh, it's a science. I mean, you could put in little mathematical scores and at the bottom of the spreadsheet out cranks this number and you say fund or don't fund. But it is very much an art. And it's also an art predicated upon your investment style. See, some people invest based on the lack of weakness. Other people invest based on the presence of strength. Now, I would put ourselves in that category.

VAN DE MARK: One of the phrases that you've popularized in your books and in your entrepreneurial boot camp was start up, kick butt, cash out. Do you take any responsibility for some of the get rich quick mentality?

KAWASAKI: Let me tell you, that's not what's keeping me up at night. You know, at the time it was more or less that. It was start up. Now, I think many people-let me defend myself, OK? We said start up, kick but, cash out. I think many companies started up and cashed out. They forgot the kick butt part. So how is that for a rationalization? So I was right. It's just they skipped a step. How is that?

VAN DE MARK: Thank you very much for joining us.

KAWASAKI: It's my pleasure.

Nightly Business Report transcripts are available on-line post broadcast.  The program is transcribed by FDCH. Updates may be posted at a later date. The views of our guests and commentators are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc., Nightly Business Report, or WPBT. Information presented on Nightly Business Report is not and should not be considered as investment advice. © 2000 Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc.


12/07/2000: Paul Kangas' Wall Street Wrap Up

PAUL KANGAS: That Motorola revenue and earnings warning, a Goldman Sachs earnings estimate cut on Microsoft (MSFT) and carryover selling from yesterday's broad downturn on Wall Street led to an opening sell-off this morning which sent the Dow Industrial Average down 50 points at the outset of trading, while the NASDAQ Index fell nearly 90 points. An overdue technical rebound helped the Dow snap back to post a seven-point gain by 11:30 a.m. and the NASDAQ cut its loss to only 27 points, but there was little further depth to the buying because of growing caution ahead of a possible Florida Supreme Court ruling regarding the presidential election. The market continued to flounder about in moderately lower ground in afternoon trading with tomorrow's November employment report making traders even more cautious. In a slow downward spiral then, the Dow Industrial Average slumped to a closing loss of 47.02 points at 10,617.36. The NASDAQ Composite fell 43.84 points ending at 2752.66.

Big board volume tapered off quite a bit from yesterday, 1.118 billion shares. And about 200 million more shares of down volume than up volume.

The Dow Transport Index down 19 2/3 points.

But the Utility Index managed to gain 1 2/3 points.

The Closing Tick practically neutral at -99.

Standard & Poor's 500 off nearly 8.

Just about a 7-point drop in the 100.

But the MidCap 400 managed to gain nearly a point and a quarter.

The Bridge Futures Price Index down just over one point.

New York Stock Exchange Composite losing almost a point.

Value Line Index down 2.28.

Russell2000 Small Cap off nearly 2 1/2 points.

And the broadly-based Wilshire 5000 down 68.84 points.

After the market closed, the Federal Reserve reported in the week ending November 27, the M-2 money supply rose $14.1 billion.

The bond market held up quite well today, despite some profit-taking pressures after the recent rally.

Sentiment was fairly positive because of signs the economy is slowing, and buyers today were confident tomorrow's November Jobs report will confirm that. Another plus factor was a 50-cent per barrel drop in New York January oil futures down to $29.35.

Tax-free and corporate issues edged up about 1/8 on average, and the longer-dated Treasuries did about the same.

No change at all in the 5-year notes.

The 10-year notes up 5/32, with the yield down to 5.30 percent.

And the 30-year bond edged up 8/32.

And the Lehman Brothers Long-Term Treasury Bond Index gained 2.77.

Motorola (MOT) topped the active list on 31.3 million shares, traded as low as $15.88 on the earnings warning. And Merrill Lynch and Standard & Poor's both downgraded the stock. But it did come back nicely.

Lucent Technologies (LU) down $0.56.

Southern Company (SO) off $1.13. Southern priced a 25 million share offering of its stock at $28.50.

Nokia (NOK) down $0.81, undermined slightly by the Motorola (MOT) news.

And then Best Buy (BBY) fell $5.88 on news it plans to put up $425 million in cash to acquire Musicland Group (MLG).

MetLife (MET) up $1.19. That stock will soon be added to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, so Index Fund buying, no doubt.

Compaq Computer (CPQ) losing $0.75.

AT & T (T) dropped $1.

And Nortel Networks (NT) down $1.63.

Bank of America (BAC) making a little comeback of $1 after dropping well over $3 yesterday on its earnings warning.

Avon Products (AVP) gained $1.56. The company sees fourth quarter earnings coming in at $0.65 a share, right in line with Street estimates and Avon is comfortable with year 2001 earnings estimates of $2.10 to $2.12 a share.

Lexmark International (LXK) lost $1.94 after First Boston Brokerage cut earnings estimates for the year 2001 by a nickel, down to $2.60 a share.

National Semiconductor (NSM) dropped $1.13. Merrill Lynch downgraded it from "accumulate" to "near term neutral."

Polaroid (PRD) down $0.56 to a new yearly low. First Boston cut estimates there.

RadioShack (RSH) dropping $5.56. The Girard Klauer Brokerage downgraded it from "buy" to "neutral." The company itself noted investors may see Best Buy's (BBY) purchase of Musicland Group as causing more competition.

And Solectron (SLR) down $1.55. UBS Warburg Brokerage downgraded that stock from "buy" to just a "hold."

Musicland Stores (MLG) up $1.94. It was up $2.25 yesterday when the company said it is talking to somebody about being acquired and, of course, you just heard Best Buy is going to pay $425 million cash. That works out to about $12.55 a share for Musicland. Meritage (MTH), the home builder, up $4. For the second straight year, "Fortune" magazine named this company as one of America's 100 Fastest Growing Companies. It has been posting record earnings readily and steadily and earlier in the year that stock was only $10 a share.

Dril-Quip (DRQ) had a good day, up $2.88. Morgan Stanley upgraded it from "outperform" to a "strong buy."

And Medicis Pharmaceutical (MRX) did well, up $5.94. Chase Hambrecht & Quist upgraded it from "buy" to a "strong buy."

Hasbro (HAS), the big percentage loser, down $2.44. The company sees year 2000 earnings are going to at best be just, well, just break even, maybe even have a loss of $0.10 to $0.20 a share. The company also is cutting its dividend 50 percent, down to $0.06 to only $0.03 quarterly.

And Three-Five Systems (TFS) down $2.44. This company makes 80 percent of Motorola's handset displays and the company itself today lowered its fourth quarter earnings estimates from $0.20 down to $0.08 to $0.10 a share, no doubt because of Motorola's problems.

NASDAQ trading, nearly a 44 point drop in the Index, but volume well down from yesterday. About 15 stocks higher for every 23 lower.

Microsoft (MSFT) topped the active list, losing $3.56. Goldman Sachs, as I mentioned earlier, cut 2001 earnings estimates but only by $0.03, down to $1.88 a share.

QUALCOMM (QCOM) moved up $5.06.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) down $1.50.

And CIENA (CIEN) managed to edge up $0.25. Its fourth quarter earnings out today, $0.14, way up from $0.02 a year ago, $0.02 above the Street estimate and CIENA also increased its year 2001 estimate of revenues.

Intel (INTC) edged up $0.56 despite the warning.

And Juniper Networks (JNPR) up $8.58.

Sun Microsystems (SUNW) down $1.44.

JDS Uniphase (JDSU) gained $1.38.

Oracle (ORCL) down $1.88, a real mixture here today.

SDL (SDLI) was up $7.19, 10th in NASDAQ volume.

Harvard Bioscience (HBIO) went public today. It's a drug discovery firm. 6.4 million shares offered at a price of $8, opened at $8.50 and the