As earnings season ends, anxiety sets in

Sometime around now, with the earnings release by Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) already out, the earnings season draws to a close. A number of small companies will still report but the huge ones are nearly done. That means the market will have to wait until April to get new data on how important corporations are doing and whether they will stick with their forecasts for the rest of the year.

This is when the anxiety sets in for investors. Even if Q4 numbers were bad for many companies, they gave enough information for shareholders to hold or sell their positions. For the time being those clues have disappeared.