We discussed last week that a couple of important companies were about to release earnings reports: Intel on Thursday and JPMorgan Chase on Friday. Intel's numbers were fantastic: $10.6 billion in revenues for the fourth quarter of '09, a jump from $8.2 billion in the same quarter the year previous and a tick better than the analysts' consensus of $10.2 billion. JPMorgan's fourth-quarter revenues were also up solidly, increasing 32 percent from the year-earlier period, although at $25.23 billion, they fell a tick short of the forecast of $26.81 billion.
Although the earnings reports make both companies seem pretty healthy, both stocks lost a little ground on Friday. It's a useful reminder that the direction a stock takes - particularly on one specific day - may not say a whole lot about the overall solidity of the company. And it especially doesn't say a whole lot about the direction of the economy.
Wall Street had already factored in the expected revenues for both companies, so unless they missed the mark by a great deal, the share price wasn't going to move a whole lot on the news. The question is, are you interested in the earnings reports because you're invested in those stocks or because you want to see how the recovery is progressing? If it's the former, you might have been a little unimpressed, but if it's the latter, the reports were pretty good news.
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