美国股市：新的一月，更多可怕。围着8000点唱戏就不错了。从14000点跌到7500点再上下折腾，已经很伟大了。

 

Stocks: New month, more fears

Wall Street just shut the door on the worst January ever and February is not looking much better.

After closing out the Dow industrials and S&P 500's worst January ever, investors might be hoping for a little breathing room before the next wave of negative reports hit. No such luck.

The week ahead brings reports on all areas of the economy, including consumer spending, retail sales, manufacturing and housing. The biggest focus will be the government's January employment report, due Friday, with companies expected to have cut at least half a million jobs during the month.

The private sector employment report from payroll processor ADP on Wednesday and the weekly jobless claims number Thursday will also be of interest in the lead-up to Friday's report.

Companies have been shedding jobs left and right this year in anticipation of a deeper recession than was previously expected. Last week alone saw companies from Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) to Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) announce more than 100,000 layoffs.

"We're having a secular contraction in consumption as we restructure the economy, and it's a painful process," said Ben Halliburton, chief investment officer at Tradition Capitol Management. "It's been painful for a year and it's going to take at least another year."

Quarterly profits are on track to decline for a sixth consecutive quarter, according to earnings tracker Thomson Reuters. As of last week, 193 of the S&P 500 have reported quarterly earnings, and results are currently on track to have fallen 35.2% from a year ago.

"It's shaping up to be the worst quarter for earnings since we began tracking the results in 1998," said John Butters, senior research analyst at Thomson Reuters.

In addition, around 34% of corporations are missing analysts' estimates, a rate that Butters said is higher than the historic average, which is in the 24% to 31% range.

Next week brings earnings from 102 companies, including Merck, Cisco Systems, Walt Disney and Motorola. (For details, click here)

Last week closed out the worst January on record for the S&P 500 and Dow industrials, yet another negative sign for Wall Street in 2009. According to the old adage, "As goes January, so goes the year."

According to Standard & Poor's, since 1945, when the market gained in January, it gained in the remaining 11 months of the year around 85% of the time. But when it declined in January, it declined in the remain 11 months about half of the time. (For details, see chart).