Courtesy of Blain.
A choppy morning led to some buying in the afternoon and minor gains for both indexes as the S&P 500 advanced 0.16% and the NASDAQ 0.30%. All was quiet on the news front as investors kept their eyes on earnings.
Here are the longer term charts of the indexes – the S&P 500 is in quite a base building situation; of course we have to consider the idea that this base follows through to the downside; if that were the case we’d look for the May 2015 highs which were such resistance for a long while to now provide a support. The NASDAQ is rushing towards the fall 2015 high of 5177.
“Major indices remain in consolidation phases with no clear directional bias on a day-to-day basis,” said Katie Stockton, chief technical strategist at BTIG.
“Simply seeing the range remain intact has been a constructive phenomenon: the longer the [S&P] moves sideways after an almost 10% move, the greater the odds that another up leg results,” said Frank Cappelleri, technical analyst at Instinet.
One reason we have to take a closer look at the downside risk here is the NYSE McClellan Oscillator has now been negative most of this week; often it can turn negative even as the market continues to skew upward but is foreshadowing some weakness ahead. So let’s watch this closely.
This drop in oil won’t quit; it is now down to its 200 day moving average.
U.S. crude oil futures extended losses after data showed a 300,000-barrel build of crude stockpiles through June 26 at the Cushing, OK delivery point for the West Texas Intermediate contract.
Facebook (FB) rallied but it finished nowhere near to close to the eye popping 7% gains it had in after hours last evening.
Tempering enthusiasm for Facebook somewhat, the company’s chief financial officer, Dave Wehner, said he expects lower ad-revenue growth in the next two quarters and just modest growth in its ad load.
This evening we had both Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (i.e. Google) (GOOG) report; the market seems to like both reports. Google is up 4.5% in after hours and Amazon 2.3% as of this writing.
Amazon shares swung higher after the retail giant posted its fifth-straight period of profitability, and handily beat Wall Street’s forecasts.The online retailer reported earnings per share of $1.78 adjusted, easily sweeping past expectations for $1.11. Revenues came in at $30.4 billion, also beating forecasts of $29.55 billion. Its operating income was $1.3 billion in the second quarter, compared with $464 million in second quarter 2015. Analysts had been expecting operating income of $903.1 million. The company posted an operating margin of 4.2%, compared with 2% in the prior-year quarter.
“This is a very impressive quarter for Amazon on multiple fronts,” stated Moody’s lead retail analyst Charlie O’Shea said in a statement. “This is particularly impressive as we believe there was likely delayed shopping/spending by Amazon’s key Prime members in anticipation of the Prime Day deals, especially where purchases of discretionary items are concerned.”
Alphabet reported quarterly earnings that beat analysts’ expectations on Thursday. The parent company of Google posted earnings of $8.42 a share on $21.5 billion in revenue. Quarterly sales rose 21% year over year. Wall Street expected the company to report earnings of $8.04 a share on $20.76 billion in revenue. Alphabet’s said its advertising revenue increased 19% to $19.14 billion. Aggregate paid clicks grew 29% from the same period last year, while paid clicks on Google websites were up 37% year over year.
Ford Motor (F) closed 8.2% lower in its worst day since August 8, 2011. The automaker posted quarterly earnings that missed expectations and said its full-year earnings forecast was at risk with U.S. auto sales expected to fall in the second half.
Shares of Whole Foods Market (WFM) plunged 9% after the grocer gave a weak forecast for the current quarter as it booked a fourth-straight quarterly profit fall on Wednesday.
GoPro (GPRO) swung to a loss, but results still beat expectations, and shares jumped 12.5%.
