U.S. fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data ignited investors’ hopes for a soft landing of the economy, driving technology stocks to rise. Tesla rose 11% after the announcement of its financial report, stimulating the four major U.S. stock indexes on Thursday (26th) closed higher,S&P 500 IndexStanding at the highest point since early December last year, the dollar and U.S. bond yields rose, oil prices climbed, and gold prices fell.
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced on Thursday that the quarterly GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter was 2.9%. Although it was slower than the third quarter, it exceeded the market forecast of 2.8%, making investors expect that the U.S. economy may only fall into a mild recession. The market is now turning its focus to the US Federal Reserve (Fed) decision-making meeting next week, which is expected to raise interest rates by 1 yard (25 basis points).
The fourth quarter financial reports of US companies are in full swing. Tesla and IBM’s financial reports are better than Wall Street’s expectations, but the stock prices are different. More than a quarter of S&P 500 companies have reported earnings, with 69 percent beating market expectations, according to Refinitiv data. According to analysts’ latest forecast, S&P constituents’ fourth-quarter profits shrank 2.7 percent. While the annual decline exceeded the 1.6 percent forecast on New Year’s Day, it was an improvement from Wednesday’s more than 3 percent decline.
In terms of political and economic news, US Republican leaders are considering extending the debt ceiling to September 30 to gain more time to break the deadlock with the Democrats and delay the risk of debt default.
The United States announced new sanctions on Thursday to curb Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s military capabilities, but it saw a Chinese company included. The U.S. Treasury Department alleges that a Chinese company called Spacety China and its subsidiary in Luxembourg supplied satellite imagery to pro-Russian Wagnerian mercenaries.
China is reportedly considering export controls on the technology used to make solar chips to protect Chinese companies’ leadership in solar technology. China produces 97% of global solar wafers.
The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) global epidemic continues to spread. Before the deadline, data from Johns Hopkins University in the United States showed that the number of confirmed cases worldwide has soared to 669.7 million, and the number of deaths has exceeded 6.819 million. More than 13.26 billion doses of vaccines have been administered in 184 countries worldwide.
On Thursday (26th), the performance of the four major US stock indexes:
Focus stocks
The five kings of science and technology rose across the board. apple (AAPL-US) up 1.48%; Meta (META-US) up 4.10%; Alphabet (GOOGL-US) up 2.42%; Amazon (AMZN-US) up 2.10%; Microsoft (MSFT-US) up 3.07%.
Dow Jones The 30 individual stocks were mixed. Salesforce (CRM-US) rose 5.71%, Chevron (CVX-US) up 4.86%; Goldman Sachs (GS-US) up 1.53%; IBM (IBM-US) plummeted 4.48%, Merck (MRK-US) fell 1.58%.
fee halfConstituent stocks rose more and fell less. Marvell (MRVL-US) rose 3.86%, NXP (NXPI-US) up 3.40%, Huida (NVDA-US) up 2.48%, Micron (MU-US) up 2.05%; Wolfspeed (WOLF-US) tumbled 5.94%.
ADRs of Taiwan stocks mostly rose. TSMC ADR(TSM-US) rose 1.13%; ASE ADR (ASX-US) rose 1.74%; UMC ADR (UMC-US) up 0.64%; Chunghwa Telecom ADR (CHT US) edged down 0.08%.
Corporate News
Intel (INTC-US) forecast a loss for the quarter after hours on Thursday, and its stock price plunged more than 9% after hours. The company’s fourth-quarter revenue of $14 billion, excluding some items, earned 10 cents per share, which was not as good as the market forecast of $14.5 billion and 19 cents. It is also estimated that the first quarter (this quarter) revenue will be between 10.5 billion To $11.5 billion, excluding some items, the loss per share was 15 cents, not as good as Wall Street’s forecast of $14 billion and profit per share of 25 cents.
IBM(IBM-US) closed down 4.5 percent to $134.45 a share on Thursday. The company announced after the closing bell on Wednesday that its revenue in the last quarter was better than expected, but it failed to meet its full-year cash target. It also announced a global layoff of 1.5%, which is estimated to affect 3,900 people.
Tesla (TSLA-US) closed up 11% to $160.27 per share on Thursday. The financial report released after the market on Wednesday showed that the profit and revenue in the fourth quarter were better than market expectations. CEO Musk issued a cautiously optimistic outlook, believing that there are no major problems Or in the case of supply chain disruption, there is a potential to produce 2 million vehicles this year, and it is optimistic that there will be strong demand this year.
Chevron (CVX-US) announced that it would triple the budget for its treasury stock plan, and its stock price closed Thursday up 4.88% at $187.79 per share.
Digital media company BuzzFeed (BZFD-US) plans to use OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT to support some content production. The stock price soared 120% to $2.09 per share on Thursday, the largest increase since the company’s listing, and its market value is close to $300 million.
Bed Bath & Bed(BBBY-US) warned for the second time that it might go bankrupt. The filing showed that the company received a notice of default issued by JPMorgan Chase. It closed down 22.2% to $2.52 per share. Trading was temporarily suspended during the session and fell more than 2% after the session.
Economic data
- The quarterly annual growth rate of US Q4 GDP was 2.90%, which was lower than the market forecast of 2.6%, and Q3 was 3.2%.
- The number of people receiving unemployment benefits in the United States last week was 186,000, a decrease of 6,000 from the previous week, lower than the market estimate of 205,000.
- The number of Americans continuing to receive unemployment benefits last week was 197,500, a decrease of 9,250 from the previous week.
- U.S. durable goods orders rose 5.6 percent in December, beating market forecasts for a 2.5 percent increase, following a 1.7 percent contraction in November.
- New orders for non-defense durable goods in the US rose 6.3% in December after contracting 2.3% in November.
Wall Street Analysis
Data on Thursday showed that U.S. gross domestic product beat market expectations in the fourth quarter, and the labor market remained tight despite some signs of slumping demand. This is like a double-edged sword for investors. On the one hand, it shows the hope of a soft landing for the economy, but it also means that the Fed will keep interest rates at a level that limits economic growth for a longer period of time.
David Carter, executive director of Morgan Private Bank, said: “For optimists, the economy is slowing enough to give the Fed a pause, but pessimists believe that the degree of economic growth means that the Fed still can’t let go. Investment strategies cannot be built on hope. In fact, economic reality may soon weigh on the market, and the biggest variable is that we don’t know what will happen in the second half of the year.”
Chris Zaccarelli, an analyst at Independent Advisor Alliance, said that the U.S. economy has shown resilience in the face of interest rate hikes. The stock market’s surge this year has been impressive, but the Fed may soon dispel market hopes. Vigorous volatility. We may be in the eye of the typhoon and not quite out of the woods yet.”
The numbers are all updated before the deadline, please refer to the actual quotation
