Welp, it was fun while it lasted. Our trading day started strong, looking to book its first higher trading week since early this month. But as market participants began tracing what a 50-basis-point hike is expected to do to the near-term economy beginning early next month, it begat some real trepidation.
The Dow, which had been up +331 points or nearly a full percentage point at its session high, closed -368 points or -1.05%. And the blue-chip index got off easy: the S&P 500 dumped -1.48% on the day while the Nasdaq dropped a 2-handle, -2.07% or -278. The small-cap Russell 2000 fared the worst of the major indexes, -2.29%.
The interest rate on the 10-year bond traded at 3 1/2 year highs for most of the day, north of 2.9%. This is almost double where we started the year and, while the 10-year has decoupled from the 2-year, where it inverted for several trading days a couple weeks back, is pricing in the effects of a hawkish Fed cranking the thumb screws on the funds rate and playing catch-up with inflation.
Today it was Fed Chair Jay Powell’s turn to assert the 50 basis-point narrative ahead of the Fed’s May 3-4 monetary policy meeting. Yesterday, it was former dovish San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly flashing the 50 bps card. So it’s locked in, as far as the Fed wants us to know. But with the current sell-off, it leaves some up-room when this interest rate hike is actualized; we saw a similar thing happen in mid-March: the Fed raised rates, and market indexes rallied.
Social media app company Snap Inc. SNAP initially fell -8% on its Q1 earnings report after today’s closing bell, but rather swiftly rebounded to +9% in late trading. The company missed on the bottom line for the only the second time in the past eight quarters, -$0.02 per share versus $0.00 in the Zacks consensus, as revenues in the quarter came in-line with expectations at $1.06 billion.
Lower revenue estimates on Q2 guidance, based on the company continuing to wrangle with Apple’s AAPL changes to its iOS ad policy guidelines (which negatively affected many apps; this is not simply a Snap-based headwind). Yet Daily Active Users (DAU), the most important metric for a company like Snap, notably outperformed estimates in the quarter: 13 million versus expectations of 11 million. For the year, projections for 343-345 million DAU; consensus had been looking for 341 million.
The company has also been beaten up over the past six months: -36.8% year to date and -48.4% from this time last year. So the stock, still trading less than half where it was prior to its Q3 2021 earnings report, had little place to go but up, especially with DAU guidance improving. If Snap can get a handle on its Apple ad situation sooner rather than later, it may represent another leg up for the company. Snap entered its Q1 results with a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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