Courtesy of Blain.
Indexes opened slightly down as the Bank of Japan did not please traders wanting ever more free money, but buyers came in pretty early and everything looked fine until about 2 PM when a wave of selling came in and pushed indexes down sharply in the closing 2 hours. The S&P 500 fell 0.92% and the NASDAQ 1.19%. In U.S. economic news, the first quarter U.S. GDP advance read was 0.5%, the slowest pace since the first quarter of 2014. Consumer spending increased at a 1.9% rate, the slowest since the first quarter of 2015 and down from the fourth quarter’s 2.4% rate.
Stocks fell early in the day on the Bank of Japan’s decision to hold steady in the face of soft global demand and a rise in the yen, jarring markets particularly after media reports that the central bank would likely go deeper into negative interest rates. “This really personifies how important central bank policy is on the market,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.
“The market had been losing momentum coming into the week as the tech stocks were coming in with weaker numbers,” said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial.
Jeremy Klein, chief market strategist at FBN Securities, said stocks tested Wednesday’s highs before “we just started bleeding lower and Apple (taking a) leg lower on Carl Icahn comments weighing on the broader market as well, given its influence on that.”
The S&P 500 is now back to its 20 day moving average; meanwhile the NASDAQ sliced thru its 200 day moving average.
The NYSE McClellan Oscillator still hung on to a positive reading.
Here is the Nikkei – which is Japan’s main stock market index.
Apple (AAPL) fell anew as Carl Icahn stated he is out of the stock.
Activist investor Carl Icahn told CNBC’s “Power Lunch” Thursday afternoon that “we no longer have a position in Apple” while noting the firm is a “great company.” Icahn also said he was “still very cautious” on the U.S. stock market and there would be a “day of reckoning” unless there was some sort of fiscal stimulus.
Both Amazon (AMZN) and LinkedIn (LNKD) surged in after hours with double digits gains which should bode well for the NASDAQ tomorrow if Apple can right the ship.
Amazon.com blew past quarterly earnings estimates, as the free-spending e-commerce giant posted its fourth straight profit, boosted by a 28% sales increase. Amazon reported first-quarter net income of $513 million, or $1.07 per share, on $29.13 billion in revenue. Those figures compare with a loss of 12 cents per share and $22.72 billion in sales for the previous year. Analysts expected Amazon to post earnings of 58 cents per share on $27.98 billion in revenue. Despite tough competition, Amazon Web Services sales rose 64% to $2.57 billion from $1.57 billion in the prior-year period.
LinkedIn shares soared Thursday in after-hours after the company reported both confident forward guidance and better-than-expected quarterly earnings and revenue. The company said it saw adjusted first-quarter earnings of 74 cents on $861 million in revenue. Analysts, meanwhile, had expected LinkedIn to report earnings of about 60 cents per share on $828 million in revenue.
Shares in the company spiked more than 15% in after-hours trading, but then gave back some of those gains. Wall Street had only expected LinkedIn to report a 30% year-over-year increase in quarterly revenue and 5% growth in earnings per share over the previously reported figures from the year-ago period. Instead, the company reported 35% revenue growth and a 30% increase in adjusted earnings on a year-over-year basis.
First Solar (FSLR) shares fell 8.2% after the solar-panel maker’s profit fell short of expectations. The company also announced a new chief executive officer.
St Jude (STJ) rallied 26% after Abbott Laboratories (ABT) said it would buy the medical-device maker in a deal valued at $25 billion. Abbot Labs dropped 7.8%.
