The S&P 500 just ripped 6% higher in twelve trading days on an earnings bonanza that Mike Santoli now suspects might be bullshit. Record highs. Confetti. Champagne. Then someone checked the math.
Turns out when you squint at the actual earnings reports instead of just the headlines, things look less bonanza and more accounting trick. Revenue misses dressed up as beats. Margin compression called "strategic investment." Guidance so vague it qualifies as poetry. But the market went up anyway because the market always goes up when retail traders finally capitulate and buy at the top.
Santoli's job is to notice this stuff after it happens and write measured sentences about how maybe we should have seen it coming. He's good at his job. The warning arrives exactly when it's most useless, which is after you already bought.
The technical picture says none of this matters. Price went up. That's the only earnings report that counts. Everything else is just Mike Santoli doing crossword puzzles with quarterly filings while momentum traders are already three rallies ahead.
Twelve trading days. Six percent. Record levels. Built on earnings that may not be all they appear to be. You know what else wasn't all it appeared to be? Your portfolio before you read the article and panic-sold into a gap-up.
The funniest part is thinking fundamentals ever mattered in the first place. The market doesn't care if earnings are real or imagined or written in crayon by the CFO's nephew. It cares if more people are buying than selling. Right now they are. Santoli can write another 800 words about it next week when we're 4% higher.
By then he'll have new concerns about why the rally might not be sustainable, and you'll have new regrets about why you're still reading instead of just buying the f*cking dip.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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