I took a look at the tape on IBM for today just to see what it looks like leading up to the earnings announcement. When was that statement released about declining earnings and revenues for IBM? The stock has been under accumulation for a good part of today with about 10 being the intraday resistance. The stock finally made it beyond 10 to peak at about 10 1/2 at around 3:00 PM. Next, the trading activity changed substantially on this stock. Getting closer to 3:30 PM there were a growing barrage of 100,000 to 200,000 share block sales out of nowhere that drove the price down to about where it started from in the beginning of the day at about 107 5/8. Few were stepping up to take the other side of the large selling interests. Some of the smaller large block players (30,000 to 50,000) were starting to sell along with them. This contrasts from earlier in the day where there was a net buying pressure on the stock which more regularly traded in large blocks of 30,000 to 50,000 shares with some 70,000 to 90,000 share blocks thrown in for good measure.
Is this about when that negative news came out about IBM? At first I thought it was some funds waiting to sell when the stock topped out on its day runup before earnings that started in the morning. But if there was an interest by the funds as a group to sell, I think there would of been evidence of this earlier in the day where I think they would tend to sell into strong buying interest instead of waiting until the last half hour of the day. There was at least about 3.3M shares of these large blocks (100K to as much as 200K) to transact between approximately 3:30 and 4:00 PM. Meanwhile there was comparatively small buying interest during this period of time. If it were not for the size of the transaction, approximately $10M to $20M each, I would think it was large traders quickly exiting their trades. There was still selling as the price reached the low for the day which indicates urgency to me. A stock on the NYSE like IBM certainly trades differently than what I have seen on the NASDAQ. I am sure the liquidity of IBM is a factor here compared with the liquidity of stocks that I usually follow on NASDAQ which due to the MM system there that at least doubles the volume actually traded on a stock.
As a side note, there is a Stock Brief at briefing.com that indicates the slowdown in Intel earnings and profits is not due to the Asian situation but the slowdown in buying of their product *outside* of Asia as in the Americas. This can be considered significant news for the techs since INTC is considered an industry leader in the tech sector. This on a day that shows money moving into the tech sector which includes INTC. Accumulation by the funds or very aggressive (optimistic) speculation by the public? Part of this depends on forward guidance by the company.
Bob Graham |
