Friends
At the end of this very busy week for earnings, the takeaways are- 1) Companies are struggling to provide revenue growth 2) Companies are still delivering bottom line results, though not at the pace they have been for the past several quarters and 3) Stocks of companies that had already been beaten down are rallying on earnings, while high flyers (see Chipotle) who disappoint are being crushed. Next week will bring many more reports, so we’ll see if this pattern continues.
As for the market, Europe (mainly Spain) has reentered the conversation once again, and traders took the opportunity to take some profits from this week’s advance in prices. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 120 points to close at 12,823. The S&P 500 was down 13 points to finish the day at 1362. Gold was up $2.80 to trade near $1583 per ounce, and oil was down $1.22 to trade at $91.44 per barrel WTI.
In the end, stocks were able to hammer out gains for the week and considering the lukewarm earnings numbers reported, that is not too bad. We’ll see where traders focus next week. Will the focus continue to be on earnings, or will Europe once again lead the way? We’ll let you know.
Have a great weekend everyone. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost loved ones in Aurora, Colorado.
