Man! It seems like I have to say this at least once every earnings seasons — today is a great example of why I avoid earnings season! What looked like a buyable bounce turned out to be a vicious head fake. The S&P 500 gave back the majority of yesterday’s gains and slipped back under its 50 DMA and right back into that congestion area. The Nasdaq, which never even made it up to its 50 DMA, gave up all of yesterday’s gains and then some. Here’s the Naz’s chart:
The selling is continuing in the after-hours session thanks largely to eBay’s earnings & guidance. Here are the intraday charts of EBAY and QQQQ which show the after-hours drop:
It looks like Monte’ was right about Google being a short yesterday after all. (To my credit, I did say wait until it slipped under 200… it’s at 190 in the after hours session.)
It’s really getting ugly out there for the bulls. Somebody wake me when earnings season is over!
Call me a sucker, cuz I’ve been playing the earnings game and making money selling them afterhours. That worked great – until today. EBAY. Yowch. I know it’s gambling, but after the first two weeks of Jan being down, I thought we were ripe for a rally and that options week and earnings announcements would be the catalysts. Uh… All the gains from previous earnings ramps crapped out on EBAY. Easy come, easy go. Chin up. The sun will come out tomorrow.