If you trade individual stocks or think you might like to try, one important lesson to learn is that the future matters a lot more than the past. From the market's perspective, it's not even "what have you done for me lately?" but "what are you going to do for me tomorrow?"

A prime example today comes from two stocks I happen to own - JP Morgan Chase (JPM) and Intel (INTC). Intel reported 4th quarter earnings yesterday, JP Morgan reported this morning.

Here's what JP Morgan reported:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. today reported 2007 fourth-quarter income from continuing operations of $3.0 billion, or $0.86 per share, down 21% compared with $3.9 billion, or $1.09 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2006...

Looking ahead to 2008, Dimon commented, "We remain extremely cautious as we enter 2008. If the economy weakens substantially from here - for which, as a company, we need to be prepared - it will negatively affect business volumes and drive credit costs higher.

The provision for credit losses was $1.1 billion, compared with $262 million in the prior year. The current-quarter provision includes an increase of $395 million in the allowance for loan losses related to home equity loans as continued weak housing prices have resulted in an increase in estimated losses for high loan-to-value loans. Home equity net charge-offs were $248 million (1.05% net charge-off rate), compared with $51 million (0.24% net charge-off rate) in the prior year. In addition, the current-quarter provision includes a $125 million increase in the allowance for loan losses related to subprime mortgage loans, reflecting an increase in estimated losses and growth in the portfolio. Subprime mortgage net charge-offs were $71 million (2.08% net charge-off rate), compared with $17 million (0.65% net charge-off rate) in the prior year.

Sounds not so hot, right?

Now look at Intel's results:

Intel Corporation today announced record fourth-quarter revenue of $10.7 billion, operating income of $3 billion, net income of $2.3 billion and earnings per share (EPS) of 38 cents.

Net income for the 4th quarter was up 51% from net income in the 4th quarter of 2006.

Not bad, but then there's this from Fortune:

The company pointed to its record quarterly revenue and its sharp rise in gross margin, which surged to 58 percent from just under 50 percent a year ago. But investors sold the stock en masse after Intel said it expects its first-quarter revenue to come in at between $9.4 billion and $10 billion, compared with a $10 billion Wall Street estimate.

That's right, Intel's record revenue and healthy income has thus far led to its stock losing 11.86% of its value today, because investors have decided its outlook for the 1st quarter is not up to expectations and is therefore bad news for the future of the company and the stock.

Now back to JP Morgan Chase. The company didn't have a lot good to say, what with its income down 21% for the same quarter a year ago, and all those subprime charges and more money set aside to protect against defaulting home loans and credit card writeoffs. The CEO even said they are "extremely cautious."

How's JP Morgan's stock doing after this dire news? Up 7% today as of the time of this writing.

Why? Because even though JP Morgan's outlook doesn't look particularly sunny, they've been able to be profitable while Citi is losing billions of dollars and American Express is forecasting gloom in its credit card operations. Relative to the rest of the financial industry, which is sweating bullets, JP Morgan Chase looks not so bad. And when the rest of your industry is struggling, looking for new investors to bail them out, what do you do if you're JP Morgan? You take market share from the other guys. When they're focused on survival, or at least trying to right the ship, you can go and take the spoils that come with being the (relative) winner. Sometimes being a loser isn't so bad if you're competing against even bigger losers.

So there's your investing lesson for the day - the market forgets yesterday's news, discounts today's news and prices stocks based on tomorrow's cloudy news.