In the early morning of the 25th, Beijing time, U.S. stocks fell at midday on Wednesday, and the Dow fell 150 points. Investors are analyzing the latest earnings reports from Tesla and others and continue to focus on the Fed's interest rate path. Tesla's stock price jumped after announcing that it would accelerate the rollout of affordable electric vehicles.
The Dow fell 153.57 points, or 0.40 percent, to 38,350.12, the Nasdaq lost 20.55 points, or 0.13 percent, to 15,676.09 and the S&P 500 lost 17.45 points, or 0.34 percent, to 5,053.10.
Tesla's shares jumped after the company re-announced that it would accelerate the rollout of "more affordable" electric vehicle models. But the biggest tech company favored by retail investors missed expectations in both earnings and revenue in the latest fiscal quarter.
Visa reported stronger-than-expected results. Texas Instruments unveiled an upbeat revenue forecast, which bodes well for the chip industry, boosting shares of Asian and European chipmakers on Wednesday.
Samy Chaar, chief economist at Lombard Odier, said: "It feels like the focus is back on market fundamentals and earnings this week. At least for the time being, we are moving away from the geopolitical factors that have been weighing on the market for the past two weeks. ”
The earnings season has been solid so far. More than one-fifth of S&P 500 companies had reported earnings as of Tuesday evening, according to FactSet data, and more than three-quarters of them beat Wall Street's expectations.
U.S. stocks closed higher on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both up more than 1%, both rising for the second straight session. The Dow rose more than 260 points, or nearly 0.7%.
Jay Hatfield, CEO of Infrastructure Capital Advisors, said: "Typically, the stock market becomes weak ahead of earnings season because there is only economic and political news in the market, and they tend to be negative. U.S. stocks saw a typical earnings season rally on Tuesday after an information vacuum led to a pullback. ”
On Wednesday, the U.S. stock earnings report will remain the focus of investors' attention. Boeing, Hasbro, Meta Platforms, Ford, Chipotle and IBM are all set to report results today.
Markets continue to focus on the prospect of Fed rate cuts.
Traders in the U.S. interest rate market have begun to bet that the Federal Reserve will not cut rates this year. With the U.S. economy showing resilience and progress on inflation stalling, Fed policymakers have been signaling recently that they expect to keep interest rates high for longer. This has a knock-on effect on hedging instruments.
Swap markets are showing a total of about 40 basis points of rate cuts by the end of the year, which means that two 25 basis point rate cuts are more likely. Confidence in an eventual shift to accommodative policy helped explain strong demand for Tuesday's record $69bn 2-year Treasury bid.
Still, some traders are bracing for a possible further decline in US Treasuries, after a sell-off pushed yields on bonds of various maturities to 2024 highs. The most striking note in Treasury options on Tuesday was an $11 million bet that aims for the 10-year Treasury yield to rise above 5% within a month, compared to the current yield of about 4.6%. In the cash market, JPMorgan's latest client survey showed that neutral positioning was the largest in two months.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday that he feared that the U.S. economy could repeat the mistakes that hindered economic development in the '70s. During that tumultuous decade, the economy was constrained by stagflation, which was characterized by low growth and high inflation, and Dimon believes that risk could recur.
Stocks in focus
Tesla reported its earnings after the market closed on Tuesday, and announced that it was accelerating the launch of "more affordable models", and lower-priced models could go into production early next year.
The company's total revenue for the first fiscal quarter was $21.301 billion, down 9% year-over-year, the largest decline since 2012, net profit was $1.144 billion, down sharply from $2.539 billion in the same period last year, and net income attributable to common shareholders was $1.129 billion, down 55% year-over-year.
Tesla's first-quarter revenue beat Wall Street analysts' expectations, but its adjusted diluted earnings per share missed analysts' expectations. Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company plans to "start production of new models in early 2025, possibly later this year," after previously expected to start production in the second half of 2025.
Meta Platforms will report its first-quarter 2024 earnings report after U.S. stock market hours on Wednesday. Many analysts said that they are optimistic about Meta's prospects in the field of artificial intelligence.
Meta is laying a solid foundation at the frontier of artificial intelligence. The company's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has said that the company's AI roadmap calls for it to build a "large-scale computing infrastructure." On April 18, Meta released an early version of its latest large language model (LLM), Llama 3, which has been integrated into the company's artificial intelligence system, Meta AI. Meta AI will be built into all of the company's apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and will be accessible in all search boxes on these platforms.
According to the latest report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has reduced its Vision Pro shipment estimate for 2024 from 700,000 to 800,000 units to 400,000 to 450,000 units.
Ming-Chi Kuo had previously predicted that Apple planned to launch the Vision Pro in new markets ahead of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. This suggests that Apple may be rolling the Vision Pro to more regions next month or so.
Microsoft's and Amazon's investments in AI have come under scrutiny from UK regulators.
Britain's antitrust regulator said on Wednesday that it was investigating the recent investment and partnership between U.S. tech giant Microsoft and Amazon in artificial intelligence, and whether their partnership is subject to the U.K.'s business combination rules.
In issuing a comment for comment, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said deals that could have antitrust issues include Microsoft's investment in European AI startup Mistral AI, as well as an investment partnership between Amazon and American AI startup Anthropic.
The CMA added that it "has not yet reached any final conclusion as to whether these transactions comply with the UK merger rules or raise competition concerns in the UK". Comments from interested parties will be submitted by 9 May.
The European Commission is also said to be analyzing and investigating the partnership between Microsoft and Mistral AI.
Google Inc. announced on Wednesday (April 24) that it will delay its plan to phase out ad-tracking enabled cookies in Chrome until 2025. Google had planned to start implementing this year with the aim of changing the way ads are targeted on websites, but the company decided to postpone the change until 2025.
Texas Instruments provided positive guidance for the fiscal second quarter and said that the inventory correction for customers in the industrial end market is nearing completion.
AT&T第一财季营收不及预期。
Boeing's first-quarter revenue beat expectations.
Hasbro's fiscal first-quarter revenue and adjusted earnings per share beat consensus estimates.
Visa's fiscal second-quarter results beat expectations, and consumer spending remained relatively stable.
Enphase's fiscal first-quarter results were lower than expected, and its fiscal second-quarter guidance was also below expectations.
STMicroelectronics and ROHM Group Expand Contract for Silicon Carbide Wafer Supply
Evotec's paper earnings fell sharply last year.
Lloyd's net interest income in the first quarter was lower than expected, and operating costs increased significantly.
IBM is rumored to be close to closing a deal to acquire Hashi Corp.