Yeah, the market has been pretty brutal to any company reporting declining revenue and/or guiding lower revenue. I get the sense that most companies have decided to clean the slate and bring out all the dirty cloths now so that they can easily beat in the second half of the year,

That said, it seems that Oil may have seen its low when it touched $26 a few months ago, currently it has run ahead of its fundamentals, it should come back to the lower $30s, but I sense the worst is over, even with the Saudi’s stance in Doha.  All they need is to push oil closer to 30 to continue to get rid of the competition.

The dollar appears to have also set a bottom against the Euro, I believe that level was ~$1.06, now it stands at ~$1.14, that is a lesser head wind than the past quarter, it should continue to strengthen for the remainder of the year.  If this strengthening of the dollar continues, it should help multi-nationals, and also help put a solid bottom under the entire commodity complex. That should go a long way towards stabilizing Emerging Markets.  Then there is Europe.  It is also bottoming. China looks as if it will manage to land without a total credit collapse, if it manages to do so, that should be an added positive.

That said, I am in the same camp as you are.  The collective Feds continue to put a safety net under this fragile recovery. Yes, they continue to distort all the data  We continue to be in a mode where less bad is good.  But as time goes on, less bad may become OK, even if it takes another 2 to 3 years to get to that stage.

Intel laying off 12,000. Some recovery!

I agree with you about oil. As for the market, I think you've summed up the bull case for the market: that it may remain over-priced thanks to CB's for long enough to allow the fundamentals to catch up with the prices.

Exactly! The CBs are indeed desperately trying to hold up everything, specially markets.  No question the market is over priced, but there are some signs that things are starting to mend, slow as it may be but they are improving.  INT'C's layoff aside, I have been surprised how well the labor market is doing, and now that we have signs of wages improving, it might take hold a bit better.

Heck, even Millenials have finally started to form new households.

Re INTC, still think mid twenties is a good entry point, not so in the 30s.  It has so many levers that it can pull to preserve earnings, then it has a tremendous management team. Still, it is hard to see it returning to solid growth any time soon.  Its data center segment grew by 9%, not bad but it cannot make up for the loss of PC processors.

I still feel that on the high end server processor, ARM will take some share at the bottom end and OpenPower could do the same at the mid to high end.  Not going to happen soon, but all it would take is for Google and FB to adopt it wholesale and it becomes a flood.

Edit: Didn't read the rest of today's posts when I wrote this - clear that you are already all of this - 

lt cap,

I also noticed that a good number of companies are missing their already-reduced estimates, and living the consequences.

It's strange, or maybe it isn't, that INTC I think met numbers, but acknowledged more pc weakness going forward. And of course (as you must know) announced a layoff of 12k workers. Reaction was initially negative, but it is now up 1.5%. INTC did say that they will be shopping to acquire a datacenter company. If you can't really grow organically........

Seems like they're getting a 'free pass' on their CC so far.

I have a great interest, but I do not have a line on how their inititives in other spaces (more server chips, handheld device chips, etc.) aer fairing. Report that Apple may minimize the business they give to INTC in the next iphone iteration, I think.

The 12K layoff is just one of many levers that INTC can pull to ride through this period. INTC has a fantastic management team and certainly a fantastic engineering organization.  That said, this period has been very challenging and it shows no sign of ending.