New claims for unemployment drop to pandemic low for second week in a row
Wall Street’s “horror” at the speculation reported by Bloomberg that President Biden was considering a hike in the capital gains tax to north of 40% overshadowed today’s good news on further progress in the post-vaccine economic recovery. But...
Intuitive Surgical earnings surprise as recovery from pandemic faster than expected
Yesterday, April 20, after the market close Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) reported first quarter GAAP earnings of $3.51 a share, $1.47 a share above Wall Street estimates. Non-GAAP earnings of $3.52 were 89 cents a share above analyst expectations. Revenue for the quarter...
Watch my new YouTube video “6 picks for next week’s earnings flood”
I’m starting up my videos on JubakAM.com again–this time using YouTube as a platform. The twentieth YouTube video “6 picks for next week’s earnings flood” went up today. Please watch and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And like my video....
Netflix misses badly on subscription growth
This won’t help an already nervous market one bit. Today, April 20, after the close Netflix (NFLX) reported first-quarter subscriber growth way below projections. The stock was down 1.21% in after-hours trading as of 4:30 p.m. New York time. Revenue of $7.16...
United Airlines quarterly report raises questions about how soon pandemic-struck industries will get back to “normal”
Yesterday, April 19, after the close United Airlines (UAL) reported a loss of $3.21 a share (excluding non-recurring items) or a $7.50 a share all in loss for the first quarter of 2021. Wall Street had been looking for an all-in loss of $6.97 for the quarter....
NextEra Energy acquires four wind farms for $733 million
NextEra Energy Partners (NEP), a subsidiary of utility NextEra Energy (NEE), will buy wind farms in California and New Hampshire from Brookfield Renewable Partners. The wind turbines have a combined capacity of 400 megawatts and have long-term contracts for their...
Taiwan Semiconductor says the auto chip shortage will be done by the end of the third quarter
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), the globes biggest independent chip foundry, said last week that it expects the chip shortage that has left automakers scrambling for silicon and cutting back production will be over by the end of the third quarter. Whether...
Apple event tomorrow expected to build on pandemic sales gains for iPad and (maybe) AirPod
At its “Spring Loaded” event tomorrow, April 20, Apple (AAPL) is expected to announce changes to its 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models. Analysts expect that both models will include Apple’s new A14X chip and that the high-end iPad will come with a...
China reports first quarter GDP growth of 18.3% from first quarter of 2020
China’s Bureau of Statistics reported that the country’s gross domestic product climbed 18.3% in the first quarter from the first quarter of 2020. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 18.5% year over year growth. The growth rate broke all records...
Market response to blow-out bank earning shows somebody is still paying attention to the fundamentals
JPMorgan Chase, (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), and Wells Fargo (WFC) all blew away Wall Street earnings estimates when they reported first quarter results on Wednesday and Thursday this week. But with the exception of Wells Fargo, bank shares fell or...
Trifecta for stocks today–yield on the 10-year Treasury drops to 1.58%, another 6 basis points lower
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury fell by 6 basis coins to 1.58% today, April 15. The drop brings yields back to where they were in early March. More importantly for the current rally that continues to take stocks up to record highs after day, the drop in yields...
Soaring retail sales add to the day’s gains for stocks
Retail sales rose a stunning 9.8% in March from February’s pace, the Commerce Department reported today, April 15. In the earlier month retail sales fell 2.7%. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows or a Nobel-prize-winning economists...
Surprisingly large drop in new claims for unemployment help S&P, Dow to hit new record highs
Initial claims for unemployment in regular state-run unemployment programs fell to 576,000, the Labor Department reported today, April 15. That’s a pandemic low and a drop of 193,000 from the surprise spike in initial claims in the preceding week. Economists had...
Consumer price inflation rises more than expected but markets go “So What?”
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6% in March from February, the Labor Department reported this morning. Year over year consumer prices are 2.6% higher than they were in March 2020. Economists had projected that the headline CPI would climb 0.5% in March from...
Microsoft buys Nuance to strengthen AI position
Microsoft (MSFT) will buy speech-recognition pioneer Nuance Communications (NUAN) for $19.6 billion in cash. The move will speed Microsoft’s ambitions in the healthcare digital record keeping market. Microsofts goal is to use voice recognition technology to...
Bank lending officers haven’t received the message–they keep restricting credit
This isn’t good news for the prospects for a sustained economic recovery in the United States from the pandemic recession of 2020. The 25 biggest U.S. banks reduced their total loan portfolios by 8% in 2021 through March from the same point in 2020, according to...
Nvidia jumps 5.62% today on upgrade to revenue forecast and news of its first microprocessor for servers
Nvidia (NVDA) announced its first microprocessor for the server market today, April 12. Right now Intel (INTC) owns around 90% of the market for server processors, where its chip works in tandem with a graphics chip from Nvidia to handle highly complex computing jobs...
Show us the jobs, Federal Reserve says, before any interest rate increase
We want to see the job gains before we remove any support for the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at an event at the International Monetary Fund, on Thursday, April 8. Putting another marker in the ground on when the central bank might start to...
Is your portfolio ready for earnings season?
Earnings reports for the first quarter of 2021 start rolling in on April 14 with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC) both reporting before the stock market open. The big question is how much of the huge year over year earnings growth is already in the price of...
New claims for unemployment up again this week
Initial claims for unemployment in regular state programs rose by 16,000 to 744,000 in the week ended April 3, the Labor Department reported today, April 8. This was the second straight weekly increase in new claims. For the prior week, the total new claims figure was...
Watch my new YouTube Video “Best Pick for the Big Tech War”
I’m starting up my videos on JubakAM.com again–this time using YouTube as a platform. The eighteenth YouTube video “Best Pick for the Big Tech War” went up today. Please watch and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And like my video. You can see...
Nothing in the Federal Reserve minutes released today to pause financial markets.
Nothing to see here. Move along. In the minutes from its March 16-17 meeting, released today April 7, Federal Reserve officials told the financial markets “that it would likely be some time until substantial further progress toward the [Open Market] Committee’s...
Bond traders speculate that the bond “lull” won’t last long–and that yields will spike again
Today April 6 the yield on the 10-year Treasury is down again–to 1.65%, a drop of 5 basis points. After looking like it was on a short path to breaking 1.90% and threatening 2.00%, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has been stuck in a range of 1.60% to 1.70%....
Thinking of buying VW on its push into electric cars? But which class of VW shares? Here’s the one I’m buying tomorrow for my 50 Stocks Portfolio
You could buy VWAGY, trading today, April 5, at $37.00, up 4.27% or you could buy VWAPY at $29.27, up 2.92%. (A search for VW ticker will discover another 21 symbols on various European exchanges but for U.S investors these two ADRs are the major choices. Both are...
Surge in services activity adds to stock rally
Stocks are up strongly this morning (April 5) on delayed buying after Friday’s huge jobs gains for March (the stock market was closed for Good Friday) and on very good news from the service sector of the U.S. economy in the March survey from the Institute for...
Look for Q1 and Q2 earnings forecasts to continue the rally
Wall Street is looking for a record quarter for earnings growth for the first quarter of 2021 to keep the stock market trend pointing upward. The first earnings report for the quarter are due from the big banks on April 14 and 15. On April 1 FactSet reported that the...
March jobs numbers good news supports yesterday’s rally
In March the U.S. economy added the most jobs since August, the Labor Department reported this morning. Payrolls increased by 916,000 jobs in the month. (And the February numbers were revised upwards to show a gain of 468,000 jobs.) The combination was enough to send...
Watch my new YouTube video: “3 picks for earnings season”
I’m starting up my videos on again–this time using YouTube as a platform. The seventeenth YouTube video “3 picks for earnings season” went up today. Please watch and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And like my video. You can see it...
Apparently everybody decided today that tomorrow’s March jobs report will show accelerating economic growth
With the financial markets closed tomorrow for Good Friday, traders and investors jumped in to buy today ahead of what is expected to be a jobs report tomorrow morning showing unemployment dropping to 6.0% (by the official measure) from 6.2% in February. The Standard...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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