Marketgems Earnings Trader- Trading Strong or Weak Earnings Growth

[jenna]

A Time to Exercise Caution as we said from Thursday afternoon, if you're going to bet your savings on this market in the next few week(s), you might as well go to the track or try you hand in Vegas. Caution should be execised as these next week(s) will be the 'economic war of earnings' versus the war in Iraq. These catalysts will be the 'puppetmasters' and the charts will indeed move as 'puppets' to the whim of the puppetmaster. You think you are trading the charts, when actually you are trading the market's interpretation of news, earnings, sentiment as they appear in "chart form".

We are looking for a TREND and we'll use the daily and intraday short term moving average to identify beginnings, middles and ends of that trend. Always the market internals will be scrutinized. Our stock picks are based on "selectivity" as this is more a "market of individual stocks" than a "stock market". We will buy strength and sell weakness and the market will not necessarily act the same across sectors and there will be pockets of strength as well as areas of weakness. We are not looking to be right, its better to make money than be right and be caught up with excessive analysis. This week we'll allow the market and prices to interpret the fundamental and technical information. It's the market's opinion that really matters and not ours.

Jobs Show Worse-Than-Expected Drop
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/1853575
http://news.findlaw.com/news/s/20030404/economyjobsdc.html

Little Hope for Post-War Boom in Economy
Sunday April 6, 2:44 pm ET
By Caren Bohan


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy seems to have all but stalled out in recent months -- or perhaps even contracted -- and a raft of gloomy data have economists worried a revival may be difficult even if the Iraq war ends swiftly.


Nervous that the war would hurt their sales, many businesses froze hiring and cut their investment budgets in the run-up to the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, now in its third week.

Consumers, stalwart even in the depths of the recession that began in 2001, pulled back in the first two months of 2003 after a car-buying spree late last year.

However, the so-called CNN effect on consumers has proved limited. Defying some fears that they would stay at home glued to the television once the war began, anecdotal reports suggest they did keep shopping.

Yet an increasingly bleak jobs picture might keep them wary of spending too freely, which in turn would deprive the economy of a strong engine for growth.

"The recovery, which is very fragile, may have actually turned into a downturn a few months ago," said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University.

"Because consumption is weak, imports are falling and that may give (gross domestic product) a statistical bounce to get it into positive territory in the first quarter," he added.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL LIFT

As U.S.-led forces pushed toward Baghdad last week, Wall Street celebrated hopes for a near-term resolution to the fighting. The Dow Jones industrial average recorded a 1.6 percent gain for the week and the technology-laden Nasdaq moved up 1 percent.

Profit warnings from technology firms tempered the euphoria on Nasdaq, leading it to close Friday on a negative note.