Stocks went nowhere today, January 26, as everyone waited for earnings news from Microsoft (MSFT) after the close today and Apple (AAPL) and Facebook (FB) tomorrow.
Stands to reason, no? You wouldn’t want to be buying if Microsoft was going to disappoint. And you wouldn’t want to be selling in case Microsoft beat expectations.
In addition, most traders had already placed their bets on these earnings reports last week or at the latest Monday.
At the close the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 0.15% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was lower by 0.07%. The NASDAQ Composite slipped 0.07% and the NASDAQ 100 gained 0.05%. The Russell 2000, most sensitive of the indexes to economic sentiment lately, finished off 0.62%.
Meanwhile, the momentum frenzy in small caps–especially heavily shorted small caps–continued with shares of GameStop (GME) gaining another 92.71% on the day to $147.98. The shares traded at just $17.69 on January 8 and $5.39 on August 28, 2020. Shorts, who have already been destroyed by the stock’s move, put more money into this position last week and look to have compounded their losses.
