Unemployment Rate Steady At 4.1% For 4 Straight Months

The past few days have had a high intensity of news flow as the stock market had a mini melt down and earnings season kicked into high gear. Therefore, some of my analysis has been delayed by a few days. I am now going to review the jobs report which came out on Friday. Solid Headline…

Stocks Have A Flash Crash Thanks To Volatility

Stocks Crash & Volatility Spikes Monday was a terrible day for stocks because there was a big blow up in some of the complex volatility instruments. The S&P 500 was down 4.10% which was the worst day since August 2011 and the VIX was up 115.6% to 37.32 which was its biggest percentage increase ever.…

Amazon & Alphabet Earnings Review

Amazon Beats Revenue Estimates In the midst of the negative news during the market sell off on Friday, AMZN stock was rallying because it beat estimates. The stock was up 2.87% on Friday and fell with the market on Monday. The firm reported $3.75 in Q4 2017 EPS which wasn’t comparable to estimates because of the tax benefits…

Why Stocks Crashed On Friday

Stocks Were Overbought The stock market had a wicked decline on Friday as the Dow was down 2.54% and the S&P 500 was down 2.12%. The VIX was up 28.51% to 17.31. This was the worst week in 2 years. The S&P 500 was down the most since September 2016. There were a few reasons for this decline.…

Apple Reports An Earnings Beat With Hair

AAPL Beats Estimates But iPhone Sales Decline AAPL reported Q1 2018 EPS of $3.89 which beat estimates for $3.86. Revenues were $88.3 billion which beat estimates for $87.28 billion. The chart below shows the changes to 2018 full year earnings estimates as a result of the quarter. The low estimate came up; the high estimate…

Review Of Facebook & Microsoft’s Earnings Reports

Facebook’s Earnings Beat, But The Firm Shows Cracks After the bell on Wednesday, two of the most important firms in the market reported earnings. I’ll review both in this post. First, let’s look at Facebook. The overall numbers were good, but I see cracks in the business which might be reflected in the stock in the…

Apple iPhone X Sales In Focus On February 1st

AAPL Earnings After The Bell On Thursday Apple stock is down 6.7% since January 18th because investors are worried about iPhone X sales. The worries stem from the report that the company cut its supplier orders. Initially it was reported that Apple cut iPhone X orders by 20 million which was half the initial estimates. However, a…

Markets Calm As The Italian Democratic Party Craters In The Polls

Italian Election Update The general election in Italy is now about a month away as it will be held on March 4th. The chart below shows the latest trends in the polling. As you can see, the left leaning establishment People’s Democratic party has been cratering in the polls. This shows the high level of…

The Good News Is Priced In - McDonald's, Long Term Stocks

McDonald’s Reports Great Results With the weakness from the Starbucks earnings report, investors were uncertain whether Starbucks did poorly because of execution issues or because of macroeconomic issues. The company blamed changes in the consumers’ tastes for the miss. The holiday drinks didn’t sell well. This led me to believe the environment is fine; it…

Did The Consumer Just Top Tick The Stock Market?

Consumers Were Confident About Stocks It’s interesting to see the amazing Conference Board consumer confidence survey after the recent two day selloff in stocks. The survey’s cutoff date was January 18th which means it doesn’t include the latest selloff. This recent report was historically optimistic which shows us that the sell off might continue. As you…