Wall Street in decline: the balance sheet results of Amazon are weighing, which collapses on the stock market by more than 12%. The Apple stock, which had lost ground yesterday immediately after the publication of the quarterly report, reappuates the positive territory.
Sentiment is also affected by the new data from the macro front, relating to inflation, which is now an obsession for investors from all over the world.
After 4 pm Italian time, the Dow Jones drops by 0.14% to 33,868 points; the S&P 500 loses 0.76% to 4,255, while the Nasdaq loses 0.63% to around 12,783.
Yesterday the S&P 500 was up 2.47% to 4,287.50; the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 614.46 points, or 1.85%, to 33,916.39 points, the Nasdaq rallied above + 3%, closing at 12,871.53. However, yesterday’s strong rises will not prevent a decidedly negative closing in April for the US stock exchange; the Dow is preparing to close the month down by 2.2%, compared to -5.4% of the S&P 500. The Nasdaq is oriented to close the worst month since maro of 2020, or the month in which it resounded in all the world the alarm for the Covid-19 pandemic, with a drop of 9.5%.
New indications arrived today with the report on consumption expenses and personal incomes of March, with which the ‘preferred’ index by the Fed is also usually published: it is the core component of the PCE index, monitored by the central bank to evaluate the trend of inflationary pressures.
Against the PCE headline index, which rose 6.6% on an annual basis, accelerating compared to the previous + 6.3%, the core component rose by 5.2% on an annual basis, less than + 5.3% in February and below the + 5.3% expected by the consensus.
On a monthly basis, the trend was up by 0.3%, as expected, against the + 0.9% of the headline figure, following the rise of + 0.6% the previous month.
Consumer spending rose by 1.1%, compared to the + 0.7% expected, and accelerated compared to + 0.2% in February. Personal income increased by 0.5%, against the estimated + 0.4% and at the same previous rate, equal to + 0.5%.
Information on inflation also came from the US labor cost index which, during the first quarter of 2022, advanced by 1.4%, more than the + 1.1% expected and after + 1% for the quarter. previous, to the record from the 90s. Wages increased by 1.2%, compared to the + 1% expected, against the 1.8% jump in benefits, against the previous growth of + 0.9%.
The numbers confirmed the picture of strong inflation in the US: as a result, US Treasury rates with a ten-year maturity start to rise again, around 2.864% (however far from the record of the last three years at 2.94% tested last week) .
Market sentiment is also weighed down by disappointment over the US quarterly season, which is seeing several Big Techs show cautious attitudes looking to the next few months. In the foreground, the cautious tones of Apple and Amazon.
In particular, the ceo of Apple Tim Cook, during the call with the analysts called to comment on the financial statements, expressed himself as follows:
“I want to recognize the challenges we are facing, represented by the bottlenecks in supply chains – caused by Covid, the shortage of silicone (raw material used for Apple products) and the devastation of the war in Ukraine – said Cook, admitting that “We are not immune to these challenges.”
CFO Luca Maestri also talked about the different challenges Apple faces, including bottlenecks in supply chains, also giving a figure on the cost of these problems: an amount between $ 4 and $ 8 billion that could negatively affect sales.
Turning to balance sheet items, Apple’s eps settled at $ 1.52 in the first quarter, better than the expected $ 1.43. Revenue was $ 97.28 billion, better than the expected $ 93.89 billion and up 8.59% year-on-year.
Strong sell offs still hit Amazon after the release of the quarterly. The giant founded by Jeff Bezos reported its first loss since 2015 in the first quarter, discounting its investment in electric car maker Rivian. Amazon, as well as Apple, has also issued warnings about the challenges that will arise in the coming months. The e-commerce giant announced that it had lost $ 3.8 billion, due to the loss of its investment in Rivian amounting to an astronomical figure of 7.6 billion dollars.
Amazon then announced that it estimates an operating loss of between $ 1 and $ 3 billion for the current quarter, far worse than the $ 6.8 billion earnings that are estimated on average by analysts polled by Bloomberg.
What scares Amazon is that revenue growth was just 7% in the first quarter, compared to the boom + 44% in the first quarter of 2021 – the pace is the lowest in any quarter since the bubble burst. dot-com in 2001, and also confirms the second consecutive quarter in which revenue rose by a single figure on a percentage basis.
Eyes on Tesla on Wall Street as well, after it was learned that its CEO Elon Musk sold $ 4 billion worth of shares in the electric car maker giant in the days following the launch of the bid to acquire control of the company. microblogging.
Most of the purchases took place on Tuesday, just as Tesla stock prices sank by about 12%.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has released a total of approximately 4.4 million Tesla shares. Tesla, however, marks a strong recovery, jumping almost + 6%, while Twitter advances by 1.87%.
Finally, nothing to do for Robinhood, another negative protagonist of today’s session: the results of the first quarter of 2022 published yesterday, after the end of the trading day on Wall Street, confirmed the fear of the loss of popularity of the fintech group. Revenue, in particular, plummeted 43% year-on-year to $ 299 million, worse than the expected $ 355 million, largely on the back of Robinhood’s client-launched transaction revenue plummeting -48% to $ 218 million. Turning to earnings, these were not received, in the sense that the fintech company ended the first quarter with a loss per share of 45 cents, higher than the loss of 38 cents per share expected by the consensus. Other numbers that confirm the APP crisis are the following: in the first quarter of 2021, supported by members of the Reddit forum who had launched a buy charge on the Gamestop title, Robinhood had witnessed a growth of its accounts of 5.5 million units. This year, the number of users increased by just 100,000 on a net basis, bringing the total to 22.8 million. The stock returns to gain ground after having lost up to over -11% after the publication of the balance sheet.