ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
While unemployment seems to have crested, the outlook for jobs growth is as dark as ever. Cintas (CTAS), a maker of work uniforms, reported disappointing earnings yesterday evening and provided a dour outlook on the jobs market: “We anticipate that when job recovery does occur, it will be a slow and lengthy process. In addition, … Read more
Today, Google (GOOG) closed above $600 for the first time since January, 2008. This milestone places the stock right at the minimum price target I estimated for the GOOG post-earnings trade. With a month remaining before January options expiration and the stock market stuck on “cruise control” for now, I believe I have much more … Read more
Last night, Research In Motion (RIMM) released an earnings report that exceeded analyst expectations, produced strong guidance, and was well-received by the market. I took particular interest in RIMM’s share repurchase activity. RIMM used $775M to purchase 12.3M shares at an average price of $63 per share (full details noted in Seeking Alpha’s transcripts of … Read more
For Toll Brothers (TOL), history has a nasty habit of repeating itself. Over the last two quarters, TOL released preliminary earnings reports that propelled the stock to one-day double-digit gains on record trading volumes. For the second time in a row, the actual earnings report generated the exact opposite response. After the last earnings report, … Read more
When I examined the trading patterns in Google’s stock (GOOG) between earnings reports, I found little consistency for forming a trading strategy. For October’s earnings cycle, I chose to play one of the few promising historical patterns: 67% of the times that GOOG opened up in response to earnings, the maximum close until the next … Read more
It has been a very long time since a stock blindsided me, but the sting is no less powerful! Yesterday, SunPower (SPWR) dropped the AA-bomb – audit and accounting, announcing that: “…based upon an internal review of its Philippine manufacturing operations, the company believes there may have been unsubstantiated accounting entries made in the first … Read more
For the second straight quarter, Toll Brothers (TOL) provided a preliminary quarterly report that ignited the stock as sales volumes once again surpassed expectations. Robert I. Toll, chairman and CEO, explains: “Our fourth-quarter unit deliveries exceeded the high end of our range of guidance due to the delivery of a higher percentage of our backlog, … Read more
On a strong market day, RIMM opened up over 2% and, at the time of writing, is up over 4% on the day. RIMM’s share repurchase period begins today, and, so far, so good for propping up the stock. Yesterday, I expressed my doubts that RIMM would spend the entire $1.2B that its board authorized, … Read more
On November 5, Research In Motion (RIMM) announced a buyback of up to $1.2B in shares starting November 9 and lasting for up to a year. When I read this announcement, I pounced on the stock the minute pre-market trading opened. This was quite a mental exercise for me because I had just closed out … Read more
Soon after Google’s earnings I bought a November 570/580 call spread given that the year-over-year revenue growth rate finally seems to be turning around and revenue per employee looks ready to trend upward as well. I am finally getting around to explaining the move (as I promised to do) now that GOOG has reversed all … Read more