Good Earnings News

Intel reported surprisingly good earnings and revenues last evening. From Briefing.com:

"Reports Q3 (Sep) earnings of $0.33 per share, $0.05 better than the First Call consensus of $0.28; revenues fell 8.0% year/year to $9.4 bln vs the $9.04 bln consensus. Intel reports Q3 gross margin 57.6% vs 55.5% consensus and prior guidance to upper half of 51-55% range. Co issues upside guidance for Q4, sees Q4 revs of $9.7-10.5 bln vs. $9.51 bln consensus. Intel guides Q4 gross margin 59-65% vs 56.7% consensus ... "

"China had a particularly strong qtr. US continued to ride strong consumer sales with the back-to-school cycle exceeding co's expectations... Channel sales out have shown healthy sequential growth for three quarters in a row. Inventory in the channel remains slightly below normal levels ... "

From memory, a majority of Intel's revenues come from overseas sales. This is my thesis for the call option purchases with expiration dates well beyond earnings reports. In hindsight, I suppose I should have included Intel in the stock selections. Oh well ...

Actions

Doing nothing but sitting and awaiting earnings reports from the companies in my call option book. As mentioned before, if the stocks ramp strongly into earnings, I'll likely take some profits pre-earnings. Also, hitting S&P 1100 will likely induce me to take partial profits as that was part of my initial plan. I don't usually change a plan if and as it works out. Doing that without new good cause seems to very bad luck - perhaps it shows hubris and angers the trading gods.

Word of the Day

"Recondite" - adjective [$10] an old word from the card file
Recondite means 1. hidden from sight: concealed; 2. incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge: deep; 3. of, relating to, or dealing with something little known or obscure.
Sentence: After listening to Sen. Olympia Snow's reasons for voting for the committee version of ObamaCare, her true reasons remain recondite. All she really said was the "something" needed to be done. Wow, such erudition ! Not ! Fool or knave ? I suspect "fool" in this case. A knave would surely have had a better reason.