Earnings warnings, rising energy costs, and cautious guidance going forward all weighed on the markets Friday. Today's across the board whipping just goes to show what happens when a market is priced for perfection.
Coming off the heels of Yahoo's disappointing results, Dow giants General Electric and Citigroup failed to live up to analyst expectations. In addition, Motorola also did not meet consensus estimates.
One of the biggest news items of the day was the sell-off in Google (GOOG). The stock plunged 36.96 to 399.46 after the Justice Department took action to get the company to turn over information about people searching for porn on their website.
I do not believe that the recent sell-ff in Google shares was entirely attributed to the actions of the Justice Department. That was just an excuse. The real nervousness is the company's upcoming earnings report.
The jitters began on Wednesday after Yahoo announced its earnings shortfall. Google's earnings are due out Jan. 31.
Do I think this is the demise of Google's meteoric rise? Probably not, that would be too easy. After Friday's plunge, every arm chair market expert has more than likely rushed in to short the stock. I would not be surprised to see the shares rise to the $450 level before the January 31st earnings are released.
The Market
DJIA: 10667.39, down 213.32
S&P 500: 1261.49, down 23.55
NASDAQ Composite: 2247.70, up 54.10
Friday痴 sell-off on the Dow was the biggest one-day loss since March of 2003. The NASDAQ痴 decline was the largest since September of 2003.
Oil prices rose to over $68 per barrel, the highest price since September. Oddly, there are no hurricane's to blame, and weather around the nation is quite mild. The excuse they're using today is concerns over possible disruptions over Nigerian and Iranian oil exports. Once that goes away, they will find another excuse.
Any pullback in the price to oil could trigger a nice snapback rally into months end. We will want to use any weakness in energy to accumulate Conoco-Phillips (COP). COP is attractively priced due to the ongoing acquisition of Burlington Resources (BR). My target buy price on COP is $60, so let痴 wait and see what happens.
