Not so great expectations
For some reason the BBC seems to particularly revel in the rubbish economic news and it's having a good old melancholic wallow this morning in the gloomy predictions emanating from the World Economic Forum in Davos and the latest update on falling house prices.
Since the chances are you're exposed to the BBC news in some form over the course of the day, we hope you'll enjoy the news that some technology companies are managing to exceed expectations of their earnings.
This being quarterly earnings season, we've been collating the earnings news rather than spamming you with loads of separate stories. Our round up last week was grim in tone, then we started this week with the news that it's not all bad, and now we feel empowered to turn the chirpiness dial up one more notch. Just one, mind.
All of Western Digital, Symantec, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo! posted quarterly revenues that beat analyst expectations. While we mustn't forget that these expectations were as pessimistic as you would expect in these times, we still count them as a positive.
Of course it's not all good news. Sony's profits for the quarter were 95 percent lower than a year ago, but even then its revenue exceeded expectations. Elsewhere AOL announced it was cutting ten percent of its workforce, which should amount to about 700 people, mainly in the US.
The hope is that, for the markets at least, worst case scenarios are already priced in and thus we might see this trend of low expectations being bettered, continuing. Having said that, we're not putting the champagne in the fridge just yet.
