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Rather than go through the blizzard of earnings reports Wednesday night, I thought I might take a stab at discussing the recent market action and attempt to put it into perspective. Besides, delving into the earnings details doesn't seem to matter these days, as stocks explode on good news, lukewarm news and bad news.
Behold the bull
The stock market has been on an epic run from the July lows, with hardly a breather other than the nasty but short-lived break we saw in February. Since that event, the rally has become even more relentless and maniacal, with the Dow up 20 out of the past 22 days, as of Friday.There is no decent explanation to account for this. The bulls talk about it being 1995 all over again. And while last summer I assumed they'd make that case -- which is why I'd gotten out of my shorts, before re-entering them, way prematurely -- I thought last fall that that scenario and the end of Federal Reserve rate increases had been well discounted. I certainly never dreamed the bulls would be able to make their case so forcefully in the stock market.
This earnings season, in aggregate, has been nothing too great, though it has not been terribly weak, either. For the most part, as I just noted, even bad news has been lapped up. For example, virtually every memory company -- Micron Technology (MU, news, msgs), Hynix Semiconductor (HXSCF, news, msgs), Samsung Electronics (SSNLF, news, msgs) -- reported disappointing results.
Then, Qimonda (QI, news, msgs) reported the worst results of them all, earning just 17 cents per share in the quarter, versus estimates of 31 cents. In addition, the company lowered expectations due to the price of DRAM and flash, and said it might actually lose money this quarter. In other words, it's a real nightmare for Qimonda. QI's stock price responded to that news by rallying nearly 10% at one point the following day. If it could rally on one of the worst chip reports, you can see how every other chip stock could, too -- though that doesn't explain why.
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All through earnings season, the closer a business has been to actually having to sell finished goods (i.e., the closer one gets to the consumer), the worse the news has been. For instance, in its press release last week, Office Depot (ODP, news, msgs) noted that in addition to seeing a disruption from Microsoft's (MSFT, news, msgs) new Windows Vista operating system, it also saw "a softening in small-business spending during the quarter." Office Depot went on to note that "sales in the second quarter may be similarly affected if current business conditions persist in North America." (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money.)
Of course, the mantra amongst chip purveyors and bulls alike is that the bottom has already been seen and we are off to better times, though thus far there is no data to support that. Even Apple (AAPL, news, msgs), which was quite successful at beat the number last week, saw iPod sales miss expectations, as they slowed dramatically from 21 million units last quarter to 10.5 million units this quarter. Apple's earnings were helped by the collapse in component prices (namely, flash) and better-than-expected Mac sales (which could be related to the fact that Vista is such a dog).
I could traipse through a mound of other earnings reports, but the bottom line is this: The results have been largely irrelevant, due to the giant party that's under way.
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