Alphabet slid to the July low right before earnings! The stock closed Oct 23 at $320.21, down 5.4% for the month and down 22% from the May high.

Pro GOOGL:
???? Business: Google makes money on search, YouTube and Android, that is on the ads around them, also sells Google Cloud to companies and grows Other Bets, home to the robotaxi. Q3 results come Oct 28 after the US close, the market expects $2.94 per share, a year earlier they earned $2.87.

Earnings:
???? Q2 2026: revenue grew 24% year over year, to $119.8B, and operating profit added 30% and reached $40.8B.
???? Net profit $112.2B vs $28.2B a year earlier, but $98B of it came outside the core business, almost all from revaluation of stocks Alphabet owns, so it is fairer to look at operating.

Valuation:
???? Market cap $3.97T on 2025 profit of $132B, so you pay about 30 years of earnings. On the last four quarters on paper it comes to about 16, but that is inflated by the same revaluation, we do not look at it.
???? Dividends and buybacks: for 2025 they paid $0.83 per share, in Q1 and Q2 2026 $0.21 and $0.22. Shares bought back in 2025 for $45.7B, and in H1 2026 they did not buy back at all.

What raises concern:
???? Buybacks stopped, and long-term debt over half a year grew from $46.5 to $98.2B
???? Capex twice as high: in H1 they spent $80.6B vs $39.6B a year earlier, and on the report the market will watch whether revenue is catching up

Pro Tech:
???? From the May high the stock has been grinding lower in steps, highs lower and lower, from 384 in August to 364 in September, and this week they broke the September low 327.7 and went under the 50 and 200 MA, which converged in the 340-343 zone together with the 0.5 fib of the whole rally from the March low. Now we sit at the 0.618 fib around 324, a bit lower the July low 314.9, RSI on the daily 31, almost oversold, on the weekly 43, and volumes on the dump are ordinary, no panic, so I expect the 315-324 zone to hold and after the report the priority is a bounce to 340-343, and a hold above them opens the path to the September high. A gap on earnings can go either way, so size the position off the invalidation.

???? Targets: 341, 364 and ideally 384
???? Stop: daily close below 314.9, then the 0.786 fib around 301 is in play