“Cheers – to the Dow not falling 200+ points again”
Dow: 13,103, +26 (+0.20%) S&P 500: 1,412, +4 (+0.30%)
Despite Weather.com’s aggressively early warning of a super-hurricane/winter blizzard to hit NYC on Monday – and the subsequent coinage of the term “Frankenstorm” (cue the Halloween costumes) – investors managed to stay focused on a busy Wall Street trading session. With a bunch of jobs, manufacturing and housing data coming in mostly positive and more earnings reports increasingly mixed, stocks were all over the place (picture them stuck in the aforementioned Frankenstorm). The Dow was up and down, but ultimately finished 26 points positive for its 1st gain since Monday.
Durable Goods orders surge, Weekly Jobless Claims dip & Home Sales rise slightly
Prefer a rib-eye to a slice of roast beef? Fantastic – then you’ll love durable goods orders. Orders for big-ticket items like cranes & machinery jumped a whopping 9.9% last month after dropping 13% in August. The change came courtesy of a spike in aircraft orders that had slowed over the summer. Weekly jobless claims were positive, but not as impressive – the number of Americans filing for 1st-time unemployment claims dropped by 23,000 to reach a total annual rate of 368,000 civilians. The jobs market has been steadily improving. And finally, pending home sales (sales of existing, as opposed to newly built, homes) rose by 0.3% in September. Though not a huge increase, it aligns with the recent theme of a strengthening housing market. All-in-all, not too shabby.
P&G beats earnings expectations & Amazon.com comes out with a loss
Consumer goods conglomerate Proctor & Gamble (PG) posted results better than expected results and jumped 3%. The producer of shopping-cart stuffers like Tide, Gillette, and Bounty released earnings down compared to last year, but above the earnings guidance management set earlier this year. Textbook setting the bar low and beating expectations by the P&G CEO. Amazon.com (AMZN) posted a 3rd quarter loss as it has heavily invested money in the Kindle and expanding its warehousing and distribution facilities recently. Hopefully it will lead to profits in the future, but the stock was down both today and after hours for an aggregate 3.5% drop.
Best Buy warns of poor earnings
And Best Buy (BBY) continued its stock free-fall dropping 10% today. They didn’t even report earnings yet, but warned that they’re changing up management and that earnings are going to be bad. There’s a clear causal relationship between Amazon’s rise and Best Buy’s fall, and the BBY new management’s got a challenge ahead of ‘em.
Tomorrow:
- Apple reported earnings after the market closed of over $8 billion last quarter, yet missed expectations (yes, that’s possible for Apple) – the stock was down slightly in after-hours trading, but stay tuned tomorrow to see how investors react & how the news affects other companies…
- The UK is officially out of a recession – GDP growth last quarter was just under 1% (not too much, but at least the economy didn’t contract again) – we’ll see how this affects markets globally before the weekend…
- Here in the US, 3rd Quarter GDP & the final Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Poll for October
- Earnings: Merck, Arch Coal, Comcast…
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