good earnings

Surprisingly, many companies are stating good earning so far in this young earnings season. Some are beating handily and others are meeting expectations. Never a bad thing either.

Happy Friday.

DJIA 12,891.86

NASDAQ 2,422.93

SP500 1,397.84

that old adage

the old saying, 'buy the rumor, sell the news' works well in the other direction too: 'sell the rumor, buy the news'. All week, actually for weeks now people have been watching and waiting for Google to report their quarterly numbers. Finally the numbers came out and the first comments were about how growth was slowing & that Google's main business was eroding. The stock traded up in after-hours trading and they essentially knocked the ball out of the park. So what does it do today? Trade up 90 points, almost 20%. Go figure. Interesting side note, for the first time ever, a majority of sales came outside the U.S.

Happy Friday.

DJIA 12,849.36

NASDAQ 2,402.97

SP500 1,390.33

deleverage

With all the attention directed towards financial institutions these days, the word on everyone's lips is "deleveraging", in other words, unwinding positions, paying down the margin debit balances, reducing exposure and saying goodbye to outsized returns on strategies that appear "safe" until one finds out that the equity is leveraged 10-20 times or more to exaggerate the returns and thus creating the appearance of high returns without the risk.

Happy Friday.

DJIA 12,325.42

NASDAQ 2,290.24

SP500 1,332.83

start of Q2

will this be the quarter? Things are looking good w/ tax season almost behind us. Given how rough the first quarter was, maybe sitting on the sidelines was a good thing. Had an interesting conversation with the prime broker who custodians at Goldman. Since GS was one of the few banks that actually made $$$ on the subprime credit mess, as custodian they look very strong, as opposed to other prime brokers like maybe Bear for example. BTIG does not have any type of exposure to the subprime sector so they are strong as their custodian.

Get it done.

Happy weekend.

DJIA 12,609.42

NASDAQ 2,370.98

SP500 1,370.40