Investors Look More Closely at Small-, Mid-Cap Stocks
DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: Earning season's wrapping up, sort of. Jennifer Westhoven's here with her "A.M. Market Call," to look at how the season's gone -- Jennifer.</s>JENNIFER WESTHOVEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi. We really have the bulk of it behind us now, but we have some big tech companies coming up next week, and still some pretty good names this week. Let's take a look at how we are doing so far. Of the S&P; 500 companies that have reported, my last look said 403 of those companies, or 81 percent, had reported -- there you see. And of those, 57 percent beat estimates -- but of course, many of those estimates were lowered. And we'll just skip right down: Just 15 percent missed estimates. And of course, a lot of companies go out of their way to make sure that they don't miss estimates. If they know anything beforehand, they usually try to warn. So that's generally why that number is so small. In terms of this week, we've got a lot of oil companies coming out. Among the companies that are reporting this week, we've got Royal Dutch Shell and Phillips Petroleum on deck. Also there you see that Dow component Procter & Gamble is due to report, as well as Tyson Foods -- the chicken company -- and CVS -- the drugstore chain. And I want to mention how John Hancock Financial -- an insurance company -- has been in one of the best performing sectors. They've been peeling a little bit lately as the market has been picking up.</s>MARCHINI: Financials and energy have done pretty well. If we see some good earnings reports here, do you think it could give the overall market a lift?</s>WESTHOVEN: Probably not, because this is an area where those kinds of earnings expectations have been completely built in, especially for energy. Every energy company that has come out has beat the Street, generally by quite a lot, and sometimes it doesn't give their stocks a big boost. One of the things, though, to look out for are big-cap stocks, because, although we're looking at S&P; 500, I found that last week the big talk on the trading floors was small-cap stocks. We know the Dow has moved back into the black for the year, and so has the Russell 2000, which measures small-cap stocks. It's really just been shooting higher lately. There you see a big gain at the end. And we couldn't really show it to you here, but it's really outpacing the Dow and the S&P; 500. Small-cap and mid-cap stocks have been flying lately, and a lot of times they fly under the radar screen.</s>MARCHINI: Under the radar screen, but a good place to look, nonetheless. Jennifer Westhoven, thank you.