Hello traders everywhere! Adam Hewison here, President of INO.com and Co-creator of MarketClub, with your mid-day market update for Wednesday, the 22nd of May.<br /><br />Target and Lowe's Both Miss<br />Both Target (NYSE:TGT) and Lowe's (NYSE:LOW) missed their estimated earnings this morning and disappointed Wall Street. Both companies blamed the miss on bad spring weather. I guess you have to point to something when you miss what everyone is expecting. We will be looking at Target and Lowe's today.<br /><br />After the close, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) will announce their earnings for the quarter. Everyone is really keyed in to this stock to see if Meg Whitman has made a difference. We will also be looking at Hewlett-Packard today.<br /><br />What Is Ben Going To Say Today?<br />Everyone's going to be tuned in today to watch and listen to what Ben Bernanke has to say about the economy. It should be an interesting session and should also reveal a lot more about what they are going to do, when it comes to the QE program. So far, the results of the QE program are questionable at best, as the Fed by its own admission has indicated that they are disappointed that they didn't do more earlier. As always, I will be watching and looking at our Trade Triangles for clues as to when the current four year bull market has run its course and come to an end.<br /><br />The Canary In The Mine<br />I was born in England, in a city called Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. You may have heard the expression, "carrying coals to Newcastle." It is dirty hard work, and several of my uncles worked in the coal mines. The canaries were carried in cages and accompanied miners down into the mines and acted as an early warning sign if the air was toxic. If a bird dropped off its perch while the miners were working, miners quickly scrambled to get out of the mine as the air was too toxic to continue working. Yesterday, we used this analogy for a stock that maybe alerting us, that the air in the stock market is getting toxic to own stocks.
