I generally agree with your conservative approach to not holding any stock into earnings... although there are exceptions along the way. Nevertheless, thanks!

Curious. Why do you believe that technical analysis is going to give you future insight in this case when you know that a specific news item - more precisely, a poorly reported non-news-item - prompted the Friday sell-off and you saw how the market reacted even late in the day on Friday? Surely there's a discernible difference between an event and a trend, even if you employ a predominantly TA philosophy.

The only truth in the market is price and volume, and that's determined by investor sentiment, not news. The news events on Friday were only catalysts to what was destined to happen, they did not cause it. Sentiment readings have been bullish for two weeks, I've been alerting people to them that long, the market just needed a little push to set it on its way.

If you subscribe to the tenants of Dow Theory and the Efficient Market Hypothesis, then you believe that news events are reflected in market price almost immediately, sometimes even before they happen. They could have impact on a trend, if they are powerful enough events. But generally the trend continues, and plots price action on much bigger forces than singular events.