A look at the day ahead in the US and global markets by Mike Dolan
Megacap Meta reignited Big Tech jitters on Wall St overnight as its bloated shares balked at a seemingly decent earnings update on Wednesday night – but the mining sector was abuzz over a possible mega-offering of BHP’s $39 billion acquisition of Anglo American.
In contrast to the positive way markets treated Tesla shares after a shortfall the day before, Meta stock triggered a 13% after-hours drop in its shares as investors seemed to focus on the scale of his profligate spending. on artificial intelligence projects.
The respective market reactions may have a lot to do with investor positioning ahead of time – with Tesla down over 40% for the year to release and Meta up over 40%.
Regardless, Meta’s pullback sent Wall St stock futures down about 0.5% to 1.0% before Thursday’s bell and upped the ante as reports “Magnificent 7” keep coming. Microsoft and Alphabet are under the microscope later in today’s busiest day. of the results season so far.
With nearly a third of the S&P500 indexes already released, nearly 80% beat estimates and reported earnings growth rose nearly 7%, returning to the level of consensus forecasts for the first quarter at the start of the year. ‘year. And first-quarter mixed earnings estimates, which combine results with forecasts for those yet to be released, have also climbed back above 3% after a fade earlier this month.
Wary of this month’s slightly jaundiced sentiment for tech stocks and rising currency volatility in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei, South Korea’s Kospi and Taiwan’s benchmark all lost 1-2% for the day on the next day.
Tech also shuddered in Europe on Thursday, with STMicro falling 3% after the chipmaker cut its full-year sales forecast. European banks also top the rankings, but their shares have largely broken a series of records.
The big corporate news was in the mining sector and BHP’s $39 billion bid for London-listed Anglo American – a deal that would create the world’s largest copper miner and which sent shares of Anglo by 13% on Thursday. Copper prices have risen more than 10% this year.
With buoyant global growth and a likely geopolitical rush to secure scarce resources boosting commodity markets in recent times, deal activity in the sector appears to have shifted into high gear and the UK’s FTSE 100 stock index, at the cheap and resource-rich valuation, outperformed again to reach a new record. .
The pound sterling was also higher.
That’s the micro: The macro view of the first three months also appears later Thursday with the first official reduction in U.S. gross domestic product in the first quarter and associated inflation measures.
The consensus forecast is that growth will have slowed to 2.4% from 3.4% in the final quarter of last year – with PCE core inflation estimates rising from 2.0% to 3.4%.
However, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow model projects growth of up to 2.7% and Friday’s March reading from the Fed’s preferred PCE inflation gauge will likely dominate…
