Courtesy of Blain.
Friday was a bit of a curveball as overseas events impacted U.S. markets. The S&P 500 fell 1.13% and the NASDAQ 1.52%. Chinese futures sunk over news of coming government regulation to expand short-selling and limit over-the-counter margin trading. Regulators in China banned the margin trading businesses of brokerages from taking part in umbrella trusts. Investors in China have ramped up wagers on stocks by borrowing through umbrella trusts, which allow for more leverage than brokerage financing. Greece is also back in the news as it seems to be every 3 months – we know the story here… raise a lot of fuss, everyone kicks the can down the road – rinse, wash, repeat!
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis met with IMF officials on Friday, as investors became increasingly nervous about the funding crisis in Greece.
In economic news, the consumer price index showed an increase of 0.2 percent in March, below expectations of 0.3 percent. However, the figure marked the second-straight month of gains and matched February’s 0.2 percent gain. Core CPI, excluding food and energy, came in slightly above expectations at 0.2 percent, the same level as in February.
As for the indexes, the move down in the NASDAQ hurt this breakout from a wedge pattern while the S&P 500 never got over our top trendline.
Still positive on the NYSE McClellan Oscillator….but just so.
We have been pointing to the amazing move in the Chinese market but when things go parabolic like this they are prone to a serious punch in the gut. You will see it in the chart Monday as these measures were announced after Chinese markets had already closed.
Honeywell (HON) beat estimates by 2 cents with quarterly profit of $1.41 per share, though revenue fell slightly below analyst forecasts. The company gave a cautious sales outlook, but said expanding profit margins should boost the bottom line.
Another rough day in the semiconductor space as Advanced Micro Devices(AMD) slumped after saying it is hard to see whether the second half will be “substantially better” than the first half of the year. While this is a sub $5 stock and we usually don’t look there, this is the only real competitor for Intel.
Mattel (MAT) rose as the toy maker reported that sales declines slowed in its Barbie and Fisher-Price products, and the company posted a smaller-than-estimated quarterly loss.
Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook are among the major tech names reporting earnings next week. Have a good weekend and we’ll see you back here next week.
