Certainly the City seems to be expecting a healthy performance.
The US business boasted the healthiest performance, with operating profits up 28%, as stronger stock markets and an improving economy lifted consumer confidence.
Output was 2.5% higher than in the same period in 2010.Consistent with this healthy performance, the euro has been fairly strong, trading above $1.40.
The healthy performance comes despite a push by European politicians to limit firms' exposure to financial risks and to promote lending to local economies.
The slump contrasted with a healthy performance in August, when sales were up because of the Edinburgh festival and the furore over the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Apart from faith in central bankers' ability to rescue the global economy, the healthy performance for stocks and stock funds could be attributable to continued strength in corporate fundamentals.
It is worth noting, however, that the two camps are not debating whether the economy needs to go into recession to wring out any chance of inflation, only whether it should slow to 4percentt or 3percentt, still a healthy performance, or, at worst, 2percentt.
In the first half of the year consumers spent $10.2 billion buying and renting DVD's and videocassettes, a healthy performance for an industry that some analysts once wrote off as road kill on the supposed fast lane to the information superhighway.
But for the first time he refused to reiterate past protestations that Chrysler was not for sale.Despite a healthy performance by the rest of DaimlerChrysler (Mercedes-Benz, trucks, finance and so on), the firm's net earnings in the final quarter of 2006 plunged to a meagre €577m ($724m), fully 40% lower than a year earlier.
Expect healthy performance.
