Much of this week's financial buzz centered around Alcoa 's (NYSE: AA ) Q3
earnings report Tuesday the "official" start of earnings season as well as
the quarterly results for a couple major players in the tech and financial
sectors, expected to set the pace for the next few weeks as Wall Street shakes
out corporate America's three-month winners and losers. The aluminum-making
earnings bellwether kicked things off on a sour note late Tuesday with a wide
miss of expectations, reporting EPS of 15 cents to Wall Street's 22-cent
estimates that sent the stock down as much as 5.5% Wednesday. Alcoa's report,
often also cited as a gauge of numerous economic headwinds, demonstrated a few
things namely, that earnings estimates in general after the past quarter might
be too high, and that while China's economy might be better than thought,
Europe's tanking isn't being overplayed. However, AA stock gained back some
ground by the end of the trading day and made up most of the rest by the end of
the week and Alcoa actually finished up 5.5% (at $10.26) for the week! The
initial drop might have been reactionary, but numerous investors took the
opportunity to get a financially sound industry leader at bargain-basement
prices. Financial Sector Blues JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM ) set a poor cadence
for financial institutions Thursday despite beating expectations. JPM took a 5%
loss on the day and sent its banking brethren to the hurt locker , too. The
negativity came not from the earnings, which were $1.02 compared to an expected
92 cents but from numerous other pieces of unwelcome news, including losses
from several fee sources, lawsuits over bad mortgages and an expected $300
million drop in debit card fees in Q4. Still, JPMorgan remains a highly
profitable company that's a more attractive investment opportunity than some
of its other peers. And although JPM took a post-earnings hit, the losses were
buffered by a buildup heading into Thursday, and JPM also finished the week for
the better, up almost 4% to $31.89. Finally, Good Earnings News However, not all
earnings reports this week were frowny faces and wilted flowers. Google (NASDAQ:
GOOG ) citing massive increases in paid clicks and in its mobile business, as
well as 40 million users for its Google+ social network reported EPS of $9.72
on Thursday, hurdling Wall Street's expectations by almost 10%. Google
finished Friday at $591.68, which put it up 5.85% for the day and almost 15% for
the week. And despite the enormous ramp-up in stock price, GOOG still is
reasonably priced. Not to mention the company's enormous gains came at a
generally lousy time for the markets at large, making the case for Google to be
considered a tech safe-haven . BlackBerries Work For 2 Out of 5 Days Poor
Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM ). Its gaining little traction with its new
BlackBerry smartphones, the PlayBook has flubbed, and this week it endured
another scuff to its tarnished brand when the BlackBerry service endured a
three-day outage affecting 70 million users globally and causing scores to
renounce their devices. While the short-term effects on RIMM stock were minimal
it actually finished the week up 1.5% at $23.97 the long-term damage to the
company could be severe. Research In Motion already has numerous superior
competitors and several self-made problems , both of which have helped RIMM
stock lose more than half its value year to date. Thus, the company was in no
position to suffer a massive blow to consumer loyalty. Three Up Halliburton
(NYSE: HAL ): Up 6.88% ($2.41) to $37.43. Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI ): Up 6.16%
($3.29) to $56.67. Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB ): Up $5.57 ($3.74) to $70.94. Three
Down Youku.com (NASDAQ: YOKU ): Down 6.63% ($1.44) to $20.28. China Unicom
(NYSE: CHU ): Down 4.16% (83 cents) to $19.12. US Airways (NYSE: LCC ): Down
4.13% (26 cents) to $6.04. As of this writing, Kyle Woodley did not own a
position in any of the aforementioned stocks.
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