Friends
Today’s market was dominated by a mistaken earnings release by Google. Instead of coming after the close, Google’s earnings release was mistakenly disseminated midday, and the details were not good. Having missed the analyst’s estimates by a mile, the stock quickly fell about 10% and then was halted for a couple of hours. Companies that are about to announce bad news certainly hope to be able to manage the event and keep the damages under control. Oops.
Anyway, as for the rest of the market, stocks came under pressure, especially the NASDAQ, as Google’s earnings shortfall put pressure on many other tech stocks. As for the other averages, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 7 points to close at 13,549. The S&P 500 was down 3 points to finish the day at 1457. Gold was down $10 to trade at $1742 per ounce, while oil was down $.17 to trade at $91.95 per barrel WTI.
After earnings disappointments from the likes of IBM, Intel and now Google, tech stocks are under pressure and proving to be among the weakest this earnings season. Microsoft’s earnings come after the close so we’ll see if the trend continues. After the mess that was Google today, the bulls can be encouraged that stocks in general did hang in there pretty well. Seems like today could have been worse.
Have a nice evening everyone.
