MSFT Beats, AMZN Misses

Both in spectacular fashion and while I don't put too much into after hour trading, it's interesting that both are down, MSFT marginally and AMZN by about 9+%.


Tomorrow we have the big rally in Egypt with Mohammad El-Baradei leading the popular protest for the people. Again, as I mentioned this morning is the military. Every modern leader of Egypt has come from high rankings in the military. As you may know, Hosni Mubarak is getting on in the years and is having health difficulties which has put the succession process into motion before the protests broke out with the Tunisian revolution perhaps being a spark in Egypt.


Egypt is the biggest Arab country by population and is the bedrock of US foreign policy in the Arab world and arguably one of our closest allies. What comes of this is the type of unknown that the market doesn't like.


Also we have advanced GDP coming out tomorrow. Between AMZN, a possible "Sell the news" in MSFT as we saw in AAPL, the disappointing jobless data today, the Egyptian and Albanian situations, we could see selling toward the close no matter what direction GDP goes in as traders may be reluctant to hold anything over a weekend like this.


Many seem to think that QE3 is a foregone conclusion. As I wrote last night, the Paul family is a wildcard that could upset the entire apple cart at the Federal Reserve. Transparency is not something the Fed likes, a full audit of the Fed without any protection from the Dodd-Frank reforms may produce some very provocative stories that may finally force the American population to come to terms with exactly what the Fed is and how their best efforts have led to little more then a melt up in the equities market-and what goes up, will come down, especially when it's built on a house of cards.




Major transitional events are the ones that drive people from the market, but they're exactly the events that smart investors make their fortunes on. A quick read of famous traders and you'll find they didn't make their money riding the market up long-everyone else did, they made their money when things got turbulent and they were short-they made the money that all other lost. 


I can not pretend to know the date of a black swan event, but you should prepare yourself to embrace it, not run from it. 


Sorry, that's just some random thoughts I wanted to share with you. Until then, we keep looking for the opportunities now and keep that risk management air tight.