Earnings news on Tuesday morning was mixed, but there weren't any significant blowups or extremely poor guidance. Verizon (VZ) had the worst guidance, but traded up on the news, and most of the other names that reported earnings also held up.
The market chopped around for most of the day on slightly negative breadth, but Apple (AAPL) and Netflix (NFLX) helped to hold up the Nasdaq 100/Invesco fund (QQQ) as market players anxiously awaited the report from Microsoft (MSFT) .
Microsoft earnings per share and revenue are slightly below forecasted numbers, but expectations are low, and the stock is seeing a move up of more than 10% so far. The cloud business was strong, which is what the market wanted to see. Guidance is the key and won't come until later during the conference call, but the headline is that the numbers are solid, and there are no signs of any significant negatives so far.
We'll see how Microsoft develops from here, but given how strong Netflix has been since its earnings, there is some appetite for big-cap technology names. We will have to wait another week before we see more FATMAAN reports, but earnings season so far is not the disaster that some have hoped or feared.
Be prepared to hear how poor positioning and short squeezes overcome any "sell the news" reaction.
Have a good evening. I'll see you tomorrow.
(MSFT, VZ are among the holdings in the Action Alerts PLUS members-only club. Want to be alerted before AAP buys or sells these and other stocks? Learn more now.)
