1.   At the same time in the third quarter, two more companies posted positive surprises than negative.

2.   Barring a crush of positive surprises, corporate profit gains are expected to be far smaller than in former quarters.

3.   A lower tax rate and other favorable items weakened the force of the positive surprise.

4.   A. The biggest positive surprise to the market was how good corporate earnings have been.

5.   Aggressive jawboning by corporations about lower profit forecasts has seen to it that investors get mostly positive surprises when the quarterly figures finally come out.

6.   But I think, as Mazzucchelli does, that expectations are so low as to enhance the possibility of positive surprises.

7.   But two stocks due to report earnings Tuesday, Intel and International Paper, had a good day, as investors apparently hoped for a positive surprise.

8.   But with most third-quarter earnings announcements completed, the bounce from positive surprises is probably already built into stock prices.

9.   Edelstone said he did not expect many positive surprises in the semiconductor business in the third quarter, but he does in the fourth.

10.   Fifty percent is around the average for positive surprises over the last several years.