The market just wrapped an exceptionally strong earnings season. Companies beat estimates. Stocks went up. Analysts nodded gravely and said there's an underlying trend that remains front and center.
Nobody will tell you what the f*ck that trend is.
This is financial journalism at its purest. Take a quarter where thousands of companies reported thousands of different numbers. Ignore all of it. Declare there's one big takeaway. Refuse to put that takeaway in the headline. Make retail traders click through to find out the trend is probably something like "AI spending continues" or "margins held up better than expected." Groundbreaking stuff. Really earned that byline.
The beautiful part is calling it exceptionally strong. Strong compared to what? Last quarter? Last year? The projections analysts pulled from their a*ses three months ago? Doesn't matter. Slap "exceptionally strong" on it and move on. The trend remains front and center, which is a phrase that means absolutely nothing but sounds like it was workshopped by someone who gets paid by the word.
Somewhere right now a day trader is reading this headline and thinking he's about to unlock the secret. He'll click through. He'll read five paragraphs of nothing. He'll see the trend is that companies are spending money on data centers or whatever. He'll buy three tech stocks at market open Monday. He'll be down 8% by Tuesday because the trend that remains front and center shifted to the back left corner when Powell sneezed during a press conference.
Charts don't care about underlying trends. Price action doesn't read earnings summaries. But sure, let's pretend this exceptionally strong reporting season means something other than numbers went up until they didn't.
Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash
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