Google reports; stock falls; let the pundits begin
A few days ago, I wrote about Google and all the crystal balls people use when earnings are going to be reported:
Oh no!!!!! Is the Internet advertising market over? Or is it just a slight correction??
I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. I just want to point this out: When Google releases its numbers on January 30, the stock will either go up or down. And about 20 minutes afterwards, the pundits will start to talk as if they knew exactly what was going to happen…
Think about this today, January 20: Nobody knows a damn thing about what’s going to happen in 10 days. But stay tuned, because it’ll be hindsight bias at its best.
Well, the earnings are out. Despite having a monster quarter, Google (GOOG) fell short of analyst expectations and its stock is (currently) down over 16% in after-hours trading.
Here are some screenshots of news coverage.
I don’t have pundit reactions yet, but send them to me when you see them and I’ll post them here.
Incidentally: As I noted before in When do you sell a stock? …
Sometimes, when other people sell stocks en masse, they can become immensely attractive because of this short-term stupidity. Refer back to my example of how Ebay dropped 20% in one day because they missed expectations by a penny. If on that day you still thought Ebay was a good fundamental investment, you could have bought it for a discount price.
Disclosure: I bought Google in after-hours trading today.
