The “No Reward” Stock Market (INTC)(JPM)(WFC)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 7:21AM EDT · Published Oct 15, 9:57AM EDT

Good deeds should be their own rewards, but in the stock market that it not entirely true. Good earnings, especially in a harsh world, are supposed to yield shareholders something. In the perverse climate of suspicion that has enveloped the market for the last two days, doing good, doing well, means next to nothing. R218533_855025_2

The Good Samaritan way of thinking was never part of commerce. It was consigned to the religious realm and stayed there. The ancient figure Job has stayed with the world of business especially as it is manifests in the stock market.

Today, Intel (INTC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Wells Fargo (WFC) should be doing well. They earned the right with outstanding numbers for the last quarter. But, each is up only modestly, 1% or a bit better. They have been dragged into the pit by the news that retail sales were poor last month, down 1.2%.

There was not much surprise in the retail figures. The economy is in a recession. It was bad, and there is more coming.

Intel and the two banks don’t have much connection to the shopping environment. A mind could stretch the case, but the conclusion is bogus.

But, bad things happened to good people. The shareholders in three companies which did remarkably well found that out today.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.