A Huge Earnings Day

John Murphy from Stock Charts:
-- IBM AND CHIP STOCKS LEAD MARKET LOWER
-- SEMICONDUCTOR INDEX THREATENS 200-DAY AVERAGE
-- NASDAQ 100 IS IN DANGER OF DEATH CROSS
-- CORPORATE BONDS PAY HIGHER YIELDS BUT TREASURIES ARE SAFER


Floyd from OEX:

-The world is filled with idiots. Earnings are irrelevant to the longer term performance of a blue chip stock, but IBM showed great profits, tepid earnings, and boom.
-The Death Cross was made up by people that do drugs.
-The world is not over, and the use of the 200 day moving average always is used by advantage positively or negatively by chartists.
-Who says treasuries are safer?

We just watched the market drop, bought our August 500C as low as 4.00, sold to highs of 5.10 for a day trade by 1.38 p.m., and waited the rest of the day.......just another short hour to see it hit 7.30, and the Dow to struggle into positive territory.
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Today Big Ben Bernanke gives his semi-annual report card on the monetary policy and the economy. We think he'll say we are softly recovering, and that it will take a long time, and may require more stimulus. He may leave the stimulus stuff out but believe me, they are thinking about it. Tomorrow he "reprises" his report before the House Financial Service Committee, who are all Congressmen that have never had a job of any sort.
The SEC, still learning how to use the abacus, is considering reform of mutual fund fee structures.

More important to look forward to is the results Friday of the European Bank Stress tests.

Today is a huge day for earnings: Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Blackrock, The Evil Coca Cola Company, and AX and Capital One tomorrow. These results will influence the market.
Most all know that tomorrow's housing report for existing home sales will be shit, declining from the prior month.

Monsanto (MON) and Mosaic (MOS in option format) are both performing well.