I was asked yesterday to comment on the …

I was asked yesterday to comment on the budget and debt ceiling “crises” by a subscriber who wondered why I hadn’t been talking much about them and how they could affect our portfolio.  After all, those two topics are typically dominating the business pages and business TV shows these days.

The reason I’ve been mostly ignoring those headlines in our trading and analysis is simply because the budget problems and debt ceiling constraints are meaningless distractions.   Let’s quantify some relative macroeconomic numbers and you can see for yourself why we need to stay focused on the big numbers and not the little numbers in both our macroeconomic and in our geopolitical analysis:

$38 billion budget cut debates or $600 billion QE2?   Debt ceiling crisis of a few hundred billion or $14 trillion total spent on bank bailouts and guarantees in the last 36 months?

At any rate, earnings reports are indeed what are driving our stocks in the near-term and Google will be reporting after the close today.  Feet to fire, I think the company will beat the Street estimates on both the top and the bottom line by a slight bit…and as I’ve been saying, the market’s reaction to Google’s report will be a great “tell” for the rest of earnings season.  I’ll be updating you guys after the close when Google reports on what to expect for the stock tomorrow.

Other than that, I’m looking to stay disciplined and patient today.  Let you know if I pull any triggers.