Hi, This is Albert Arfania. You had asked me about an article I received on corporate earnings. The article I received is as follows: 10/27/2006 Earnings season’s been a smash so far By Matt Krantz, USA Today Wall Street expected corporate earnings reporting season to be good. Just not this good. More than half of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies have reported results, and third-quarter profit growth from a year earlier is running at 17.6%, S&P says. That’s even better than the 14% growth expected, thanks to the fact that nearly three-quarters of companies have beaten estimates. “It’s been a really good earnings season,” says Ashwani Kaul of Reuters Estimates, adding companies that topped estimates have done so by 5.8%, nearly twice the margin they normally do. “You can’t really complain too much.” Meanwhile, solid news kept pouring in Thursday from companies including ExxonMobil and Microsoft. Now, it appears almost certain that this will be a record 18th quarter in a row of double-digit growth. The blowout earnings are a big reason stocks are starting to experience a breakout. Thursday, the Dow Jones industrials rose 28.98 points to 12,163.66 — the fourth-consecutive high and 13th record in less than a month. “If earnings were disappointing, the market would not be doing as well,” says Rod Smyth of Wachovia Securities.