Intraday NASDAQ Futures Charts (July 18th, 2013 - CLOSE)

I was looking over the Futures charts just now on a 21-minute intra day basis, and came across something odd on the NASDAQ futures charts.  Toward the end of the day, from about 2:30 till the end of the day, the NASDAQ futures fell off a cliff.  See what I mean on the 21 minute charts...

See this story on Bloomberg's website.

Basically, the futures fell following the release of Google's (GOOG) and Microsoft's (MSFT) earnings results.  Both companies posted strong disappointments.  No wonder, every company under the sun (Google included) are trying to figure out how to wring more money out of advertising on tablet devices.

Microsoft seems to have no end of bad news these days.  Windows 8 is a MAJOR disappointment on both tablets and desktops.  So they effectively failed at cracking the ever-growing tablet market, AND managed to alienate long time desktop users.  The announcement of the Xbox One alienated over 10 years of gamers who dedicated themselves to the Xbox brand.  About the only thing Microsoft has going for them is Office which, let's be honest, not everyone is tied to like they were in the late 90's and early 2000's.  There's Internet Explorer... which every internet geek worth their salt knows is junk.  Sorry Microsoft, you need to innovate before you go under.

July 18th, 2013

Most of the indexes posted very small, although positive gains today.

On the whole not much news came out.  Google (GOOG) missed on earnings by a pretty wide margin.  This was mainly due to a decline in revenue from their ad service.

Financial stocks continued to pour it on strong this earnings season, with Morgan Stanley (MS) reporting a very strong beat on their earnings.  So far this earnings season, 75% of financial stocks have actually BEATEN their estimates, making a good case that the financial sector is coming on strong.

Bernanke made more comments today, who stated that the Fed's plans for winding down the stimulus were "not set in stone."  Basically this is a re-iteration of what he said before, that the Fed plans on ending Quantitative Easing, but will do so with discretion so as to not cause a panic in the markets.

Finally, the city of Detroit officially declared Chapter 9 Bankruptcy today.  This makes Detroit the largest city in history to ever declare bankruptcy.  I mean come on, who didn't see this coming like 5 years ago?  I pretty much knew this would happen, I just didn't think it would take this long to happen.

Oh, and for the BMY chart ;) lol