First Solar’s earnings report surpassed analyst’s expectations on the bottom line but revenues remained within forecasts. Do we have here the beginning of a new long term trend?

The weekly chart shows that it may still a bit early for believing in the next run. On the other hand, First Solar seems to have weathered the margin drop pretty well – at least compared to other solar companies. Helpful was the cheapest production process of the industry for solar cells that sets this company apart from its competition.

Solar stocks are highly dependant on governmental subvention, but our oil reserves are limited. The glass is half-empty. Everyone should understand that, but no one seems to be able to imagine what will probably happen in some decades, or earlier. For solar stocks that may mean a rosy future. It is just a question of how shortsighted politicians like to be and how long they postpone the inevitable, clinging to their mental time horizon of about four years.

Baidu surprised with better than expected earnings and its stock gapped up this morning. It also guided up for the next quarter.

Remarkable was a note of the CEO that Google’s semi-exit will only moderately help Baidu and that there is still strong search competition in China. He also expects Baidu only be able to grab one third of Google’s business. Is this Asian understatement? The longer term chart reveals a very high expectation of the market that has resulted in a lofty price.

Is it too late to jump on board here? Of course not, but you have to trade the stock with the right system. As usual.

Integrated Silicon Solutions posted yesterday better than expected earnings and guided up for the next quarter. They have an even more impressive daily chart than Cirrus Logic.

Their long term chart shows the typical ups and downs without a real direction of an intact but not substantially growing semiconductor company. Similar to CRUS they have had three strong last quarters.

Earnings just came out and CRUS beats by a meager $0.01 but guides revenues a bit up. The short term trend looks promising as demonstrated by the daily chart here:

Looking back the last nine years reveals that Cirrus Logic is a cyclical stock with no fundamental growth.

However, every company that languishes for years has potentially the chance to change its business and put in a higher gear as, for instance, Apple had proven. Coincidently Cirrus makes chips that are built into Apple’s iPad and iPhone. The gadget market is expected to grow strongly during the next years and so may do this stock.

Technically encouraging is that CRUS broke the high of the last years and that it so far had three quarters in a row with healthy earnings (pink line). Three quarters in a row? Yes, that seems to count already as a success for a semiconductor company.

This was another great quarter for Apple with Mac sales up 33% compared to one year ago. They beat estimates easily and surprised with a future guidance that does not seem to be overly conservative as it used to be. Are they expecting a killer impact of the iPad, or do they want to help it with a soaring stock price?

The daily chart above matches the index and doesn’t reveal spectacular things. Looking at the weekly bar chart, Apple presents itself as the phoenix from the ashes in the world of bits and bytes. It had a stellar stock performance over the last seven years and is now everybody’s darling. Years to come of fine growth are everywhere anticipated, because of the enormous success Apple has with its gadgets that will continue to fuel Mac sales. The relative jump of the last two quarters in revenue (blue) and earnings (red) are due to accounting changes.

As usual, the typical question here is whether the stock is already expensive at this point. And the right answer is of course: It doesn’t matter. You trade it with the right system and when the trend begins to sputter, your system will act accordingly.

Network Engines impressed with a fulminant restart today in a lasting trend parallel to the market recovery of the last 18 month. Whether this is more a technical situation or NENG indeed makes a second attempt for a long term start, has to be seen. Three weeks ago it received an upgrade to buy from Needham.

The following chart shows NENG’s last ten years. So far the stock has not ignited the turbo of their engine. High hopes after the IPO got disappointed and the company is still trying to get a foothold in the market of blade servers. Unfortunately this is a tough market that favors strongly its biggest players.

Today UAL showed a restart in a strong trend over the last 4 month on merger chatter. Airlines do not have long term potential in general, given that oil prices are much easier going to rise than to fall in the long run. This one is a purely technical speculation.