9:15am (EST) The big news after the bell yesterday was eBay’s (EBAY, $25.03) disappointing outlook for the holiday season. The company reported 3Q earnings and offered an outlook for 4Q at the same time. On the earnings front, eBay beat by a penny and posted better-than-expected revenue. The problem was that their forecast for the upcoming quarter was below expectations. The company earned $0.38 a share, a penny above Wall Street’s forecast, and revenue came in at $2.2 billion. The Street was expecting $2.14 billion. PayPal and Skype, two of eBay’s top performers, helped drive those earnings numbers. All good here. For the fourth quarter, eBay said it now sees earnings of $0.38-$0.40 a share. Wall Street had been expecting 40. eBay spooked analysts when it said revenues are expected to be between $2.2 billion and $2.3 billion. Wall Street was thinking north of $2.5 billion. Yikes. The suit and ties are already bored with 3Q earnings and seem focused on what the holiday is shaping up to be like. That shouldn’t be a surprise because the market always looks ahead but the bulls have got to be frustrated that we haven’t got the huge triple-digits pops like we got when the market was correcting. Not 100-point swings, but 500 and 600 point swings. Perhaps the bulls are taking the market higher in orderly fashion (our opinion) and the higher trend that has been in place since March continues just like it has. Sure, there has been some volatility but it has been nothing compared to what we went through last year at this time. We talked about our upside targets for the major indexes earlier in the week but it is important we keep an eye on the selling pressure we saw in the final hour of trading on Wednesday. We will have to see if yesterday’s reaction was due to the negative Beige Book numbers we got at 2pm or if the bears are rallying the troops. We mentioned that we are watching the 1,100 level for the S&P 500 which was hit once again but the index closed at 1,081, down 10 points. The Dow closed below 10,000 as it fell 92 points and settled at 9,949. We would like to see 9,900 hold as this level was tested yesterday and represents short-term support. Despite the rough market conditions you still have to manage your trades and adapt to the elements. This could mean tighter stops or quicker exits and we talk about these things more in-depth this morning in the Members Area.]]>
