Market Trends

A follow-up on yesterday's article about online retailers… 

EBay Inc. (EBAY:NASDAQ) is planning to launch a joint venture with Chinese Internet company TOM Online (TOMO:NASDAQ).

The site will allow Chinese sellers to market globally, and TOMO will continue to serve as a portal for EBAY's Skype phone service in China. 

TOM Online's stock is being suspended from Hong Kong trading pending a corporate announcement, no doubt speaking of this deal. 

On the day, EBAY is resting as a doji after a slight fall to support yesterday. This is a reversal signal and should lead to a rally tomorrow on the online retailer's stock.

Trading Tactics

Man, oh man, those broker stocks are sure a tricky bet. 

For example, last week Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS:NYSE) reported a 93% jump in fourth-quarter revenues - beating analyst expectations by a wide margin and marking the best quarter in the history of the firm. On the news, Goldman Sachs' stock fell.

Now today, Morgan Stanley (MS:NYSE) stated that its fourth-quarter profit slipped 10%, as net income for the three months slipped to $2.21 billion from $2.47 billion a year ago. Yet on the news, MS is in rally mode - jumping $2.60 in today's trading to set a new 52-week high. 

So I don't get it. When holding a brokerage stock on the day of earnings, do you hope for bad numbers, like MS reported, to see a stock gain? 

Or do you hope for blowout numbers, like GS reported, and suffer through a stock loss? 

From simple performance, it seems like you hope for poor numbers, as odd as that sounds. 

The temperature chart I published in the TFN Chart of the Day on December 15 is considered to be very controversial. 

Did its author skew the data? Does the corrected data show a completely different result? 

In Market Report tonight, I'll address these and other questions about temperature changes and graphic interpretations. All this is in preface to a guest editorial in the Dynamic Market Alert next week and a follow-on appearance in a TFN Chart of the Day. 

Stay tuned... 

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