If you only work one week per summer make it this one. We've got earnings from Netflix (NFLX) tonight, Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft tomorrow, Facebook on Wednesday and a little retailer called Amazon Thursday. All of that will be coming in the heels of last week, the wildest flat five days in recent market history when Yellen, Putin and a Middle East nightmare combined couldn't stop us from making slight gains. As the dog days of summer go it doesn't get bigger than the next few days. Here's what you need to know:
Start with Microsoft (MSFT) tomorrow. The stock is at 14-year highs but if you've been reading the memos coming out of Redmond you have to be wondering why. Between Satya Nadella's 3,000 word mission statement and last week's 1,100 word layoff announcement, Microsoft has produced a tome worth of memos with the ironic themes of productivity and focus. It's like a Word function has gone rogue and started translating everything into meaningless business school jargon. Eventually Nadella has to do something other than not being Steve Ballmer.
Wednesday is Facebook (FB) after the bell. The stock is sitting just under $70. The last time it was here news that it was manipulating users new streams to make them sad. Back in March when Facebook was over $70 they cratered the entire web-2.0 bubble with their still inexplicable purchase of What'sApp. If Facebook can beat estimates, get analysts excited about in-app purchases and not do anything terrifying the stock could breakout.
Finally Amazon (AMZN) on Thursday. The world's largest online retailer is so huge and scary at this point that last week they changed book purchasing model and no one even noticed. That's right. Through something called Kindle Unlimited subscribers can read all they want for $9.99 a month. That's huge and all anyone will want to talk about is whether or not Amazon has been approved for Drone deliveries that will never happen. The stock is down 10% for 2014 but way off the lows lately, driven by the fact no other retailer Amazon's size is posting anything even close to that kind of growth. Amazon is playing a whole different game than the other guys. On Thursday night we'll see how Wall Street feels about it.
By this time on Friday the near term course of the market will be set. There's one week every quarter that matters and this is it. Sharpen your pencils place your bets and keep your browser tuned to Yahoo Finance.
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