FWIW......using the QQQ as a "proxy", I prefer to look for a downside/bearish surprise this time around. We'll see.
GOOG looks like it needs to test the gap from the last earnings surprise. Maybe the midpoint between 460-520. But tomorrow is going to be crazy. There are way too many large companies reporting at the same time. It might be a good day to sit back and watch.
"No matter what the pundits say, the new Microsoft Cashback program along with some continued efforts on other marketing programs such as Club Live seem to have worked in June. MSN/Live search was the only major engine in June to post higher volumes of search queries. Everyone else, including the big dog Google (GOOG), saw a decline. This seems even more impressive when you put this in the context of the overall search market. Overall search query volume in the market declined nearly 5% m-o-m, from 9.6 billion in May to 9.1 billion in June. Club Live search volume increased sharply, more than doubling the volume seen in May. In fact Club Live saw more search queries in June than Ask and AOL combined. Even if you exclude Club Live search queries Windows Live search volume ticked up nearly 3%, pushing MSN/Live market share back over the 8% mark. Rolling in Club Live MSN/Live market share jumped to a whopping 12.7% in June." All news about the GOOG: http://stockshoot.com/content/view/2697/
If you check out my blog, I had a similar take that while the numbers will probably look good, I feel like not only is it baked into the cake, but there might be an institution wanting to dump there shares if something maybe miniscule isn't right with the data.
After the close there are earnings from big tech heavyweights including MSFT and IBM along with GOOG and financial company MER. It is going to be extremely volatile today and tomorrow.
Henry Bloget says look for downside in revs. http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/google-goog-q2-earnings-preview-downside-risk-to-revenue- Options market priced for a $26 move. http://whatstrading.com/2008/07/17/google-inc-goog-52983-108/