Definitely negative session for Wall Street, which paid for yet another flare-up in US Treasury rates and the negative reaction of investors to the Goldman Sachs quarterly report. The Dow Jones slipped by over 560 points (-1.58%), to around 35,344 points; the S&P 500 fell 1.46% to 4,596 points, while the Nasdaq capitulated by 1.71% to 14,639.
Goldman Sachs shares collapsed by almost -8% after the publication of the financial results for the whole of 2021 and the fourth quarter.
Goldman announced that it ended the fourth quarter of 2021 with an eps of $ 10.81, down from $ 12.08 in the same period of 2020. The eps also disappointed the estimates: analysts interviewed by FactSet had predicted a earnings per share of $ 11.77. Total net income was $ 3.94 billion in the fourth quarter and $ 21.64 billion for the whole of 2021. The American banking giant’s total revenue rose in the last quarter of the year to $ 12.64 billion from $ 11.74. billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, doing better than the expected $ 12.04 billion. Net sales for the whole of 2021 were $ 59.34 billion.
In addition to reporting disappointing earnings, Goldman Sachs saw its operating expenses jump by 23%, in the wake of the increase in payrolls paid to its employees.
Wall Street – which remained closed in yesterday’s session, on the occasion of the US national holiday dedicated to Martin Luther King – pays above all the fear for the combination of inflation and higher rates.
The nervousness was fueled by the flare-up in US Treasury yields, with 10-year yields jumping to 1.85%, a two-year record, to be precise since January 2020.
Also worrisome is the trend in two-year Treasury rates, which shot above the 1% threshold for the first time since February 2020, the month before the global alarm over the Covid-19 pandemic, which sent the America and the world in a state of recession.
The 30-year rates also increased, reaching around 2.15%.
The next meeting of the FOMC, the Fed’s monetary policy arm, is scheduled for January 25-26.
From the corporate front, today came the announcement of Microsoft concerning the acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard, for a value of 68.7 billion dollars. The Activision stock flew in pre-market on Wall Street by approximately 37% before being suspended for excess of the rise. It currently marks a rally of around 30%. Microsoft’s quotations, on the other hand, are down by more than 2%. The deal confirms Microsoft’s determination to grow in the video game segment, as demonstrated by its 2014 acquisition of “Minecraft” maker Mojang for $ 2.5 billion, and last year’s $ 7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda. billions.
An article by Cnbc also pointed out how, in this way, the American giant also aims to compete more fiercely against Meta (the former Facebook) for the development of technologies that create a virtual world, the so-called metaverse. Meta falls by almost 4%.
Among other stocks, Gap suffers a nearly -7% thud after Morgan Stanley’s research division ruled, which downgraded the clothing chain’s stock rating from “equal-weight” to “underweight” . Analysts motivated the downgrade with the fear that the margins of the retailer group could suffer again, as in the period before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Alibaba is also bad, down by about 3%. The rumors reported by Reuters, according to which the administration of Joe Biden would have put the cloud division of the Chinese e-commerce giant under observation, suspecting that it could pose a risk to the national security of the United States, weighs. Under consideration would be how Alibaba would save US customer data.
Tra i titoli hi-tech, in calo Apple, Alphabet, Tesla, Tesla, Amazon.