Stock Market Today Mid-Morning Updates
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down by another 200 points. This could build the case for the Fed to continue its more hawkish monetary policy path. However, certain segments of the market seem to be making headlines today. For instance, BJ’s Wholesale (NYSE: BJ), is up by over 2% on today’s opening bell. This follows Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) upgrading BJ’s from a ‘Hold’ rating to a ‘Buy’ rating. Deutsche Bank points to the stock’s 10% pullback so far this year as well as a shift in consumer buying habits to more ‘value-oriented’ retailers.
On the other hand, Ford’s (NYSE: F) shares tumble after disappointing fourth-quarter earnings. Diving in, it significantly missed Wall Street’s earnings estimates and slightly missed on revenue. However, the company released solid guidance for 2022 as it expects to earn between $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion in adjusted pretax profits and generate between $5.5 billion to $6.5 billion in adjusted free cash flow. Ford says that it fell short on production target estimates due to supply chain problems, including an ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips.
Among the Dow Jones leaders, shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) are down 0.53% today while Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT) is up by 0.90%. 3M (NYSE: MMM) and Nike (NYSE: NKE) ticked lower on Friday as well. Among the Dow financial leaders, Visa (NYSE: V) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) are trading mixed today.
Shares of EV leader Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) are up by 1.28% on Friday. Rival EV companies like Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN) and Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID) are also up by 2.04% and 0.63% today. Chinese EV leaders like Nio (NYSE: NIO) and Xpeng Motors (NYSE: XPEV) ticked higher at 1.17% and 5.04% respectively.
Dow Jones Today: Labor Department Released Stronger-Than-Expected January Jobs Report
Following the stock market opening on Friday, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are trading 0.13% and 0.75% lower. The Dow, however, is down by 0.26% Among exchange-traded funds, the Nasdaq 100 tracker Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) is up 0.55% on Friday, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: SPY) is also up by 0.14%.
Today, the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 1.9% on Friday morning after Friday’s jobs report showed strong gains last month. In detail, the Labor Department released its January jobs report on Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Non-farm payrolls jumped to 467,000 vs the 125,000 consensus estimate and a revised 510,000 in December 2021. However, unemployment rose to 4.0% compared to the expected 3.9%. The unemployment rate in December was also 3.9%. U.S. employers added more jobs than expected in January. This is despite a surge in Omicron variant cases at the beginning of the year.
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Amazon (AMZN) Stock Soars After Beating Estimates On Strong Cloud And Ad Revenue
Among the biggest head-turners in the stock market today would be Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). Namely, the company posted stellar figures in its financial update. Diving in, the company posted earnings of $5.80 per share, crushing Wall Street estimates of $3.57. For a sense of scale, Amazon’s overall profits are currently at $14.3 billion. Notably, this marks a phenomenal 98% year-over-year leap. All this comes as most would expect the e-commerce giant to feel the burn from waning online shopping demand. While online shopping may be its most famous business, Amazon’s cloud and advertising arms stepped up to the plate this quarter.
For starters, the company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) performed spectacularly. In detail, AWS raked in a total revenue of $17.78 billion, marking a massive 39.5% year-over-year leap. This would also be above consensus estimates of $17.37 billion. While businesses of all sizes continue turning to the cloud for their data processing needs, AWS appears to be a go-to. Not to mention, Amazon also highlighted revenue for its advertising business for the first time. This segment generated $31.2 billion in revenue in 2021, with fourth-quarter sales rising 32%. To highlight, this would put it ahead of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) online advertising arm in terms of revenue.
Looking forward, Amazon sees revenue for the current quarter coming in between $112 billion and $117 billion. That’s below the average estimate of $120 billion according to Refinitiv. After considering all of this, it is no wonder that investors are happily jumping on to AMZN stock now. As it stands, the company’s shares are trading higher by a whopping 8.85% as of today’s opening bell.
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Snap And Pinterest Shares Skyrocket As Solid Earnings Figures Ease Facebook-related Fears.
In other news, social media giants continue to be a running theme in the stock market this week. However, the tone appears to be shifting for the likes of Snap (NYSE: SNAP) and Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) in particular. Now, before going into the details, SNAP stock and PINS stock are currently gaining by 42.98% and 4.86% respectively. For the most part, this is thanks to a combination of two crucial factors now. That is, both firms posted mostly positive earnings figures across the board. In turn, investors’ fears regarding the Facebook parent company Meta Platforms’ (NASDAQ: FB) recent earnings let down appear to be fading. All of this would explain the current rebound in these two social media stocks.
If anything, this indicates that investors are looking at each of these companies individually versus lumping the sector together. For Snap, the company reported its first-ever quarterly net profit on Thursday, topping analysts’ estimates on earnings, revenue, and user growth. Firstly, the company raked in a total revenue of $1.3 billion for the quarter, marking a 42% year-over-year jump. Secondly, Snap’s free cash flows is up by a substantial 133% over the same period. By and large, Snap appears to be gaining momentum across its core businesses.
At the same time, Pinterest’s gains come as the company beat estimates at the top and bottom lines. In brief, the company reported earnings of $0.49 per share on revenue of $847 million. This would be versus Wall Street estimates of $0.45 and $827 million respectively. All in all, social media stocks appear to be among the hottest stocks in the stock market today.
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