Earnings Week of 4/6

Here's the week's earnings spreadsheet:



Spreadsheet Link

First, a functional note. Or rather, a disfunctional one. Yahoo is having trouble with another aspect of their finance data. This time the screener won't return data so the the ownership information is stale. Keep this in mind and check your broker for the actual short percentages.

Last week I did a little summary of the week prior and since my other thought on filling this space is of the "misty philosophical rambling essay" variety, I think I'll just stick to a wrap-up. The web is full of blogs with those kinds of entries. So... how did I do last week? First, the OK:

APOL - I thought it would be volatile, but not volatile enough. It ended up dropping like a stone but didn't breach the break-even price in my table. It has since found support on the DMA(200).

MON - My gut feeling was for a return to 80. It closed the week at 81.41 and saw 80 on Thursday and Friday. This still has a nice chart with support from the DMA(30&50) around 79.40 and it might be good to watch with MOS coming out this week.

KMX/MDRX - neither would have been profitable strangles.

The not so good: RIMM - oy... it was profitable and my underestimation of its strength was obvious.

So on to this week's earnings releases:

Monday - BLUD. Biotechs tend to move more on news than earnings. And I don't really know anything about their products.

Tuesday - Earnings season is upon us with AA's release. Also on this day are BBBY and MOS. AA has been beaten badly though it is still well off its March lows - 60% up in fact. I'd guess that a short-weighted strategy would be the highest odds. BBBY has lost one of its major competitors as Linens & Things went BK. I believe this will have a similar impact as BBY and CC. BBBY's chart is looking good and it shot over the 200 DMA on strong volume over Thursday and Friday. Historically, BBBY has not moved much at earnings so a strangle might not be wise here. But I'd be tempted to go with a vertical call spread. Finally, MOS: as noted MON was last week and reaction was lukewarm. MOS has a somewhat more bullish chart and it has certainly made large moves in the past. But 53 on the upside seems out of reach to me so I think I'll avoid this one.

Wednesday - FDO is the only one that really interests me. I've had some success with the Dollar Store and this one before. And as before, if FDO can't make money in this economy it never will. In this case, watching to see the action before the release will be important since it's riding an upward sloping support. If that fails - it wouldn't surprise me to see FDO fill the gap back to early March over the next month.

Thursday - DJI component CVX releases. It is about 7% of the DJI now that some of the more embarrassing components have regained some respect. This one won't move a lot but it is a huge company and worth listening to what they have to say. JOSB is very close to a break-out point around 32. If it gets past this, it could bolt. Otherwise, I'd put downside support at 26, which is well above the lower break-even price.