Published on
July 20, 2010,
10:36 pm in
Opinions, Tools and Trading.
Tags: AAPL, BAC, C, dollar, GE, GS, oil, Tools.
So wasn’t there some news this morning about bad earnings from GS? And weren’t C BAC GE still bad? Isn’t everyone worried about the bank stress test in Europe? So why are all the traders happy today?
Funny that the US dollar did not matter, or at least there is not that strong correlation between the US$ and the markets. Oil still seems to be correlated, as oil went up so did the indexes.
Lots and lots of earnings on Wednesday…and even more on Thursday! I’m interested in MS WFC KO QCOM and NFLX. That should give me an idea of how the world is doing. 
And if the markets can’t rally on this evening’s AAPL report, then we’re in real trouble!
I apologize for some short blog entries, but I’m having technical difficulties with my hardware this week. I have tracked the problem(s) down, but new parts will take 7-10 days. In the mean time I’ve fired up a backup PC and getting it ready for trading tomorrow.
See you on the playing field.
First it was all the pre-market news like Initial Claims, PPI, Empire Index and Philly Fed numbers. Although the numbers weren’t all that bad, actually the IC numbers were pretty good, traders didn’t like them and we went down…and pretty dramatically after the Philly Fed announcement. Oh yeah, and AAPL scheduled a meeting for Friday morning. We meandered down under for the rest of the day.
But (there’s always a but) first rumors then news came out after 3PM that had the markets giddy with happiness. Maybe BP has finally capped the well! BP took off. Then GS might be announcing a settlement with the SEC. GS took off. Then, kaboom, the markets took off, some ending green…others red. Pretty much breakeven for the day, again. Although that was a nice recovery for the indexes.
Then afterhours, GOOG comes out with a crappy earnings report. GOOG quickly dove more than $20 dollars. But (what did I tell you?) it had no affect on the QQQQs or Nasdaq futures or S&P futures. Maybe GOOG is no longer an 800-lb. gorilla? Even AAPL went green afterhours.
Oh yeah, and Congress passed FinReg….ho hum.
Tomorrow brings some very anticipated earnings: GE BAC and C and they might just set the tone for Friday’s trading, well at least until 9:55AM when Michigan Sentiment numbers come out.
You know I’ve been bullish on oil for a couple weeks now, and news like this can really perk it up in short order: An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table. Now, just clean up the mess and maybe we can get back to normal. 
We’ve been looking for an excuse to correct this market and today we found one. If the market indicators weren’t on sell signals already, maybe the market wouldn’t have reacted to GS so badly. It’s not just banks that went down today. Either way, I suspect no more campaign contributions for this administration from GS. I’m also gonna venture that GS bought its own April puts ahead of the news and will report a stellar quarter next week. GS volume was 7 times above its average trading.
Other good news today: Unemployment rises in 24 states in March according to the Labor Dept. All the big earnings report companies sucked, but not as bad as GS’s surprise: GOOG BAC GE ISRG were all down big.
For the week the Dow ends up .19%, the S&P down .18%, NYSE down .57%, the Russell up 1.7% and Nasdaq Composite up 1.1%. So the high beta stocks are still doing okay, but the blue chips suffered. I expect next week to be down for the small caps.
Should Small Investors Jump Into Stocks?
And oh yes, the SPY puts, VIX calls and TZA did their jobs today!
Sometimes, entranced by the screens, watching equities, options and futures change colors, charts moving in a wave, and indicators pointing in every direction, I just have to scream....
