Courtesy of Blain.
With all the earnings related surges in after hours Thursday night it was not difficult to predict Friday would be a solid day for the NASDAQ – and it was, as the index added 0.71% to go along with a more modest day on the S&P 500, up 0.23%. The NASDAQ gapped up at the open and stayed steady all day. Middling economic news was ignored; durable goods, ex-transportation, fell 0.2 percent, below expectations for a slight gain but less than February’s 1.3 percent decline.
One interesting fact in today’s readings – a lot of S&P 500 stocks remain below their 50 day moving average:
Despite major gains in those major names, nearly half, or 212, of the S&P 500 was trading below their 50-day moving average. “We see that narrowing of that breadth of the market and that’s not healthy. We need a broad advance,” said Lance Roberts, general partner at STA Wealth Management.
New 15 year highs on the NASDAQ as we gapped up sharply today. The S&P 500 is still lagging some.
Names like Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) were up strong in after hours yesterday but more like mid single digits. Today they really went another mile.
On the less giddy side Biogen (BIIB) fell sharply after the company’s first-quarter sales of Tecfidera, an oral multiple sclerosis drug, came in at $824.90 million, below consensus estimates.
Xerox (XRX) closed down after the company posted quarterly earnings and revenue that missed analysts’ expectations. The company also cut its full-year forecast amid a strong U.S. dollar.
Time Warner Cable (TWC) rallied after Comcast dropped its $45.2 billion deal to buy the company, officially pulling the plug after concluding the merger would be rejected by regulators.
We still have 2 more weeks of hot and heavy earnings although we are churning through quite a bit of the S&P 500 companies already. Next week Apple among many others will take the spotlight so we’ll see you back here Monday.
