Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon report this week. Along with 157 other S&P 500 companies. That's 160 earnings calls. Roughly 160 hours of executives saying "headwinds" to a room of people who already own the stock.
The headline calls this a "critical time for tech and the market." Every week is a critical time. The word critical has been working overtime since 2009. It deserves a pension.
Here is what to expect. Microsoft will say AI. Alphabet will say AI. Amazon will say AI, then mention a warehouse. Somebody will beat estimates by two cents and the stock will fall 6 percent. Somebody will miss by two cents and it will rise 4. The chart will not explain itself. Neither will the analyst on the call who asks a question that is secretly a compliment.
A playbook implies strategy. Retail traders do not have a playbook. They have a group chat and a margin call they call "a learning experience."
Picture the typical retail trader this week. He bought Amazon calls Monday because the CEO looked confident in a photo. He will sell them Friday at a loss and call it "risk management." His wife has already read the earnings preview. She has also moved the savings account.
I read charts. Charts do not care about guidance. Guidance is a sentence a company writes about its own future, like a teenager promising to clean his room.
Three megacaps. One week. Billions of dollars moving on the tone of voice of a person named Amy from investor relations.
Go ahead and set an alarm for the after-hours print. The market will open down, up, or flat, and you will still be the least qualified person to have an opinion about it.
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