The earnings season is finally underway with the companies people actually care about. The unabashedly permabullish site Zerohedge is excitedly praising GOOGL and MSFT’s strong showing, describing the very green quotes as “so far, so good“:
For me, I was not relying on either of these stocks to fall. I have no position in them, and near the end of my tastylive show, I described Microsoft as essentially unbreakable. I am thus not rattled. Sure, it would have been a kick to see these in a free-fall, but, perversely, it’s actually better for the bears if these stocks are strong and people can get the isn’t-life-swell rally out of their collective systems.
Naturally, the NQ is benefiting from these mega-cap stocks, although the explosive move higher only partly unwinds the damage done on Tuesday.
In turn, the VIX (which zipped from a 16-handle to nearly 20) has lost some of its mojo.
During late Tuesday’s trading, we finally did break the level I’d be watching, creating a new low for the month of April, but the journey was a brief one. Looking at the longer-term intraday chart, it seems plain to me we’ve got a beautiful (albeit short-term) topping pattern on our hands. We could easily bounce 25 points higher from here without causing it one bit of damage.
The absolute wipeout in FRC on Tuesday also helped create progress on our quest to get the small caps (by way of /RTY) to break down anew.
I also want to mention, as an aside, an aspect of Slope some of you may not realize which is the Slope Tiles home page. This is a great way to see a tremendous amount of information at a glance, and it’s free for use to everyone. Here is the documentation which gives you the particulars.
As for Tuesday, it was an absolutely terrific day. I’ve got a figure in my mind which represents a “good” day, and today’s profits were over five times that much. It’s hard to go wrong when every single stock in my Bear Pen (almost all of which I am long puts) wound up in the red. Yay!
