DJIA

We will be the first to admit that in the current centrally-planned world, where nothing but the words and deeds of central bankers matter, fundamentals, seasonals, technicals and charts are a laughable anachronism from days gone by when the market - as traded by humans and not vacuum tubes with laser beams - could drop 10% without the Federal Reserve collapsing into a panicked mess.

However, there are those who still believe that what used to work in the past still does, and trade according to the patterns observed in the Trader's Almanac.

One week ago, we were surprised to see that none other than data aggregator Factset has joined the "crusade" against fabricated non-GAAP numbers. This is what it said:

Two weeks ago, when we did our latest analysis of GAAP and non-GAAP earnings, we were stunned by several findings:

First, consensus Q1 2016 non-GAAP earnings, the kind that even Warren Buffett openly rails against, have imploded from +5% to -8.3% (this was "only" -7.4% two weeks ago), and more than double the -3.4% plunge in Q4 2015 EPS.

Keep in mind that all of the above is on a non-GAAP basis, and if one looks at GAAP earnings, the picture goes from dire to absolutely disastrous. 

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

Very weak January’s have had a tendency to lead to weak long-term returns in the stock market.