Friends
Wow, there’s a lot to cover so here we go. First of all we got some terrific earnings reports after the close yesterday from Apple, Google, Microsoft, AMD and more. These big tech/growth companies are absolutely crushing it earnings and revenue wise, but as we have seen over the past couple of weeks the stock reactions have been mixed. We’ll get Facebook and PayPal after the close today.
In addition to earnings we had the results of the FOMC meeting and Chair Powell’s press conference. Not surprisingly no action was taken today, and it appears that the Fed Chair is content to remain in a dovish stance for some time to come. He made it clear that the committee is focusing on employment and indeed, there is some room to go before full employment can be declared. Anyway, the consensus after the press conference was that we should get clarity of tapering the asset purchases later in the year with the process beginning early next year- perhaps.
As for stocks, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 127 points to finish the day at 34,930. The S&P 500 was down a fraction to close at 4,400. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 102 points to close at 14,762. Gold was up $7 to trade at $1,807 per ounce, while oil was up $.57 to trade at $72.22 per barrel WTI.
As expected, it has been a very strong earnings season. Also, as expected, much of the good news was already priced in. Some companies, like Google (Alphabet) blow their numbers away by so much the shares couldn’t help but go up. But, the worries that this is a good as it will get on the earnings front seems to be creeping into the narrative. We will see, but companies are doing well despite all the challenges that they have had to deal with. We’ll stop there for now.
Have a nice evening everyone.
