Trade Alert – Zig when they zag

Here’s how the mainstream media works and here’s why you can make good money by just thinking and trading as independent-minded-ly as possible:

Facebook Sales Top Estimates as Companies Warm to Mobile Ads

23 Oct 2012

Facebook Inc. (FB), owner of the biggest social… Third-quarter sales rose 32 percent to $1.26 billion, Menlo Park, California-based Facebook said today in a statement….

Facebook’s Slowing Sales Growth Shows Mobile-Ad Struggle

23 Oct 2012

Facebook Inc. (FB) is set to post another quarter of slowing revenue… A growing proportion of Facebook‘s 1 billion users are checking their accounts via tablets or smartphones…

Those are the articles that Bloomberg chose to run back to back yesterday. Read from the articles themselves:

In the second earnings report since its May initial public offering, the company may say third-quarter sales rose 29 percent from a year earlier to $1.23 billion, the average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That’s less than the 32 percent year-over-year rise it posted in the second quarter and a 45 percent gain from a year earlier in the first quarter.

A few hours later:

Third-quarter sales rose 32 percent to $1.26 billion, Menlo Park, California-based Facebook said today in a statement.

Pretty remarkable how set groupthink can become about a stock like this. Anyway, Facebook’s up 20% this morning and we’ve got some big gains on the recent tranches of calls and common that we’ve been buying here on the site and are now up net/net on the Facebook trades. I’m going to trim down just a little bit of it this morning. Selling my nearest-dated calls, including some January 2013 $30s that I have losses on, but also some with gains. I’m holding the longest-dated strike price calls steady because they have less time risk. Selling about 1/10 of my common stock too on this morning’s pop.