financial sector Q3

--More than one-third of the 92 financial companies in the S&P500 have reported third-quarter results. Their 17 percent averageprofit drop is the biggest since Bloomberg began trackingquarterly earnings growth in the third quarter of 1997. Financialfirms account for about 19 percent of the S&P 500's value andproduced 27 percent of the index's profits last quarter,according to Bloomberg data. --The S&P 500 Financials Index hasdropped 9.9 percent this year. ``Right now financial stocks are like radioactive waste,''