We are smack dab in the middle of the 3rd quarter earnings reporting season and I gottta tell you folks if companies don’t knock it out of the park and I mean out of the yard, this market is going to take you lower! Just look at the spectacular earnings results reported by Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL) which reported all time record earnings for it’s last quarter and yet the stock went below 300 in Monday’s after hours session and subsequently recovered a bit. Or look at the earnings report that IBM (NYSE: IBM) issued after the close on Monday reporting an 18% eps increase and it’s 31st consecutive quarter of earnings growth and yet the stock got a haircut in Tuesday’s trading session. Point being you must blow out your numbers in order for these markets to reward your performance and seemingly there are certain issuers that are indeed priced to perfection.

Which leads me to the question of, is this market getting tired and could it be in the process of double topping? Take a look at the 1 year chart of the S&P 500 index. The S&P is approaching the zone of the April highs and only time will tell if we can break through this double top or if it will serve as one of the catalysts to a leg down in the market. Good luck to all.

~George