Weak Durable Goods Report Leads To A 2% GDP Estimate

Strong Kansas City Fed Report The Kansas City Manufacturing report saw none of the weakness shown in the Richmond Fed report. The manufacturing trends in each regional survey aren’t always correlated. The headline number was 26 which was better than last month’s 17. This was the best report in at least a year. The volume…

Facebook Beats Estimates, Causing Its Stock To Skyrocket

Richmond Fed Survey Shows Weakness Manufacturing has apparently weakened in April as growth has peaked. The levels seen earlier this year have historically not been maintained. It’s certainly possible that manufacturing could reach a permanently high plateau, but that’s not something I’d bet on. We’ve seen some conflicting stats from the Philly Fed and Empire…

Investors Don’t Care About Great Earnings

Earnings Season Has Been Great But Investors Sell Anyway One of the major themes heading into this earnings period was that the estimates were extremely high, making it tough for them to be beaten. The hope was that if earnings estimates were beaten more often than average, the market would break out of its recent…

Alphabet Beats Earnings Estimates

Alphabet Beats Earnings, But Stock Flatlines After Hours Alphabet reported earnings on Monday afternoon kicking off the most important week for this earnings season. Earnings per share were $9.93 which beat the consensus for $9.28. Revenue was $31.15 billion which beat estimates for $30.29 billion. Operating income was $7 billion which beat estimates for $6.6 billion. Even…

11.1% S&P 500 Profit Margins: The Highest Since At Least Q3 2008

International Earnings Boost Margins Earnings growth is now on pace to be 18.3% as 17% of S&P 500 firms have reported by April 20th. The data in this article is all from FactSet because S&P Dow Jones took a one week hiatus. Keep in mind, the quarter started as expecting 17.1% growth which implied 20.1%…

Consumer Staples Hit A 52-Week Low

Stocks End The Week On A Down Note Technically the 0.85% selloff in the S&P 500 on Friday was bad news. It means the S&P 500 may have just made another lower high. There is going to be pressure to the downside as the S&P 500 tries to hold its previous low. The range is tightening to…

Stocks Fall Despite Mostly Great Earnings

Stocks Fall Slightly As Tobacco Has A Bad Day On Thursday, the S&P 500 closed down 0.57%. American Express was up 7.6% and Amazon was up 1.9%, but the consumer staples stocks were slammed as they were down 3.14%. The sector had a rough day because Phillip Morris reported a weak quarter as the heat not…

Trade War Is The Biggest Tail Risk

Empire State Index Is Very Disappointing The general business activity reported in the April Empire State Index was ok as it fell from 22.5 to 15.8. This missed expectations for 18.2. This decline signals the manufacturing index is weakening from the rapid growth pace seen in Q1. The new orders index was even weaker as…

The S&P 500 Is Close To Breaking Out Of Its Recent Downtrend

Stocks Rally Slightly On Wednesday This week has been great for equities as they rallied Wednesday again. It was a much smaller rally than the prior two days as the S&P 500 was up 0.08%. The chart below is my basic technical analysis which shows that the market has been making lower highs. The S&P 500…

Financials Have A Weak Earnings Season Despite Headline Beats

FAANG + BAT Considered The Most Crowded Trade The chart below shows the fund manager survey which asks what the most crowded trade was in April. As you can see, long FAANG and BAT was said to be the most crowded although it lost ground, falling to 33%. With NFLX’s rally on Tuesday after its subscriber beat,…