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In 2024, at the beginning of the new year, the stock market will generally fall and market confidence will be low.
According to Bloomberg data, the total market value of the global stock market evaporated by more than $2 trillion in the first week, and the total market value of the global bond market fell by about $1 trillion, with a total evaporation of $3.18 trillion. All major U.S. stocks fell, with small-cap and Nasdaq falling the most.
Last week was the first week of the new year, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 3.2% to close at 14,524.07 points, of which, including Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, the combined market value of the seven major technology stocks evaporated more than $400 billion.
Among them, Apple, the most valuable publicly traded company and a major contributor to the Nasdaq Composite Index, fell 5.9% after Barclays downgraded the stock, and the New York Times reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing Apple of controlling the hardware and software ecosystem, making it difficult for business rivals to compete fairly with it.
The S&P 500 fell 1.5% to close at 4,697.24 points. In the UK, the FTSE 100 fell 0.6%. South Korea's Kospi fell 2.9%. The "Billboard" Global Music Index also reflected a poor start to 2024 in global capital markets, with music stocks falling 1.4% to 1,512.40 points.
Overall, 13 of the 20 publicly traded music companies included in the Billboard Global Music Index fell last week at the close of trading on Friday, with only Spotify and HYBE, the two most valuable companies in the index, up 3% and 7.9%, respectively.
The new year is off to a bad start, and 2024 is becoming more cautious for investors. Sector challenges will follow, with inflation data, subscription numbers, Q4 and annual report seasons all set to be key factors influencing stock prices and market direction.
Spotify: After the big layoffs, continue the upward path
After rising 138% in 2023, Spotify continues its winning streak, rising another 3.0% from 2024 to $193.52 per share. Previously, an upbeat analyst reported that the world's largest music audio streaming service has in fact won the audio battle after a year of strong growth, and the company's outlook is positive.
Is this really the case? One of the catalysts for Spotify's stock price to soar across the board last year was to deliver a beautiful earnings report every quarter.
Third-quarter earnings data showed that Spotify posted its first quarterly profit in more than a year due to strong user and revenue growth, and user growth was still better than expected despite higher subscription prices for premium users. (Review: Spotify: Solid performance, 6 million new subscribers in Q3 |
图注:Spotify股价走势图(21年迄今)
As illustrated in the chart above, after trading within an ascending triangle from July to November 2023, SPOT's stock finally broke this pattern in early December with above-average volume. This pattern usually indicates a continuation of the current trend and may now act as a support zone before the price tries higher again. In the longer term, it's also worth monitoring the $300 share price level, where a significant horizontal trend line connects a series of stock price movements so far in 2021.
"We entered 2023 expecting a full year of net subscriber additions to be just over 20 million, but we're actually on track to achieve 30 million, which is a significant improvement from what we expected," Daniel Ek, the company's chief executive officer, said on a third-quarter conference call. Subsequently, at the end of the year, Spotify further reduced costs and increased efficiency, launched a major layoff plan, and also hired the chief financial officer. Previously, Pivotal Research Group analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak upgraded Spotify stock to "hold" and "buy" and raised the price target to $265 from $170, with the new price target implying a 40% increase from Wednesday's closing price of $188.71. "Spotify seems to have won the war for digital audio streaming content, allowing it to continue to generate steady unit and (average revenue per user) growth," Wlodarczak wrote in the research report. ”