The hopes of a Santa Claus rally are fading fast. Wall Street is still hanging on to the hopes but conviction in it is slim. Monday started out on a bad note for bulls as the S&P 500 retested the February lows. Maybe this will bring some buying equity into the markets since so many have been waiting for this to happen.

Unfortunately, we are still awaiting the Federal Reserve decision this week. So the indices are likely to meander into it. Most investors still expect the Fed to raise rates this week. But the real variable is what they say about 2019. This is where hopium comes into to play. Traders want the Fed to signal that they are on hold until the economic data re-signals overheating.

So this macro headline trading is still hampering those who rely on micro homework. Company-specific fundamentals are heavily impacted by what the general sentiment is for the week. Regardless of how strong growth is in Amazon (NADAQ:AMZN) or Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL), buyers will not buy them until they know that the Fed is no longer intent on raising three times next year starting January.

Last night, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) reported a strong quarter, beating all metrics, especially cloud services. ORCL stock is rallying on the event. They had no bones to pick with the report. It was an emphatic statement from management that they are executing on plans and doing the right things.

Although critics could argue that there are no obvious reasons to rush into chasing upside from here, there are reasons to want to invest in ORCL stock for the long term. I consider it a proxy bet on the 2019 general market outlook. This malaise too shall pass.

That aside, in general, buyers lack the conviction necessary to build on rallies. It’s a case of once bitten twice shy. This is the prevailing meme that the media promotes. It will take a strong market-wide push that sustains for longer than a few hours to kill it. Until then, the short-term upside potential is fleeting, even on good earnings reports like the one ORCL management just delivered.

While the risk of runaway rates doesn’t directly impact ORCL, it threatens global growth. So caution is prudent and that translates into labored upside rallies. While the company is steering the ship into the new tech tide, betting on more upside has to be for the long term. Meaning, buyers of Oracle stock here are betting long to look past the current headline risks that are affecting overall sentiment.

This is to say that there are no guarantees that this is a bottom for ORCL stock. But starting or adding to a longer-term position off a good earnings report is not likely to be a financial disaster. Management is concentrating a lot of effort into its cloud services and even trying to set new trends within it. Recurring revenue is healthy and that is important for today’s tech investors. This is the model that Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) set as the standard to chase.

Bottom Line on ORCL Stock

Fundamentally, ORCL is not bloated at a 17 price-to-earnings ratio. Buying it here for the long term leaves little room for a giant financial debacle. The economy is not at the edge of a fiscal cliff. The threats here are headlines over specific issues with identifiable worst case scenarios.

Presidents Trump and XI are likely to come to terms of sorts in the next 90 days. Even then, the downside effect on the economy is quantifiable. This is not the same situation of a decade ago where we had systemic lending risk about to blow up.

Also, more recently we saw a palpable softening of rhetoric from Jerome Powell. They have now admitted that they indeed are watching the data. This week we will learn more on this front and they could further try to calm markets down.

While the stock has out-performed the Power Shares QQQ (NASDAQ:QQQ) in the second half of the year, the technical threat in ORCL stock is real. Below $45, the bears could press it to test the lows of June’s earnings. So another 6% dip from here is possible, but in the long run this should not matter much. But just in case, it would be wise to breakout entry points into tranches. They don’t ring bells so I should never load up a full position on hope alone.

These are treacherous markets and prudence is a must. I only risk what I can afford to lose. The stock markets have been bumping along important necklines and losing them would open another 10% leg lower. ORCL stock would also follow to its prior lows.

Click here for more of my market thesis and get an ongoing free copy of my weekly newsletters. Nicolas Chahine is the managing director of SellSpreads.com. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him as @racernic on Twitter and Stocktwits.