01-20-2012 outlook

So far we have had many of the major financial/banks report.  Seems to me that the results were very mixed.  WFC and a couple of larger regionals (BBT, USBancorp) looked good, the rest not so good.  I don't see this as a strong signal the economy is ready to soar.  Amex reported this evening and missed on revenues (a mixed report).

We got a slew of techs reporting after the close.  Seems the MSM is pumping it as a strong showing.  Seemed rather so-so to me.  IBM missed on revenues.  INTC beat on revenues and earnings, but had lowered expectations earlier.  MSFT was pretty much in line.  GOOG laid an egg.  In December ORCL had a notable miss.  Again - not the type of showing of a booming economy.

So we have financials with mixed results and techs with so-so results.  Not the booming economy some want us to believe. These are two large sectors of the economy and I suspect the market on inflated expectations has gotten ahead of reality.   We will see.

Here is the SPX outlook:

GL traders.  Nothing goes one way forever.  Sold the last of my trading longs today, so I am now short and cash.  The VIX broke 2 std deviations (47.5%) below its Nov 1 high - so 3 consecutive down days (as if that will ever happen again - hehehe) would signal a trend change.