Image Source: Pixabay Confused by the back-and-forth move in gold? It’s actually quite simple.Gold broke below its rising support line, and it’s now verifying this breakdown by moving back to this line and taking a breather in general. This is a completely normal post-breakdown phenomenon. The important thing is that gold remains below the rising line – this means that after the current breather, gold is most likely going to slide once again.Please note how perfectly gold reversed after reaching the rising resistance line during yesterday’s session – it didn’t move beyond this line.Today is the third day when gold is likely to cl...
Image Source: Unsplash A 10% decline in shares of Amazon.com Inc (Nasdaq: AMZN) in recent weeks is an opportunity to buy a quality name at a discount, says a UBS analyst. Amazon stock has upside to $215 Stephen Ju reiterated his “buy” rating on the tech behemoth this morning and raised his price objective to $215 which suggests a more than 25% upside from here.His bullish call on Amazon stock arrives only days before the multinational is scheduled to report its financial results for the first quarter. Investor focus for 1Q24 has broadened into looking at total franchise revenue and operating income vs more narrowly on AWS, particul...
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released its real gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecasts for 2024, and while global growth is projected to stay steady at 3.2%, various major nations are seeing declining forecasts.This chart visualizes the 2024 real GDP growth forecasts using data from the IMF’s 2024 World Economic Outlook for G7 and BRICS member nations along with Saudi Arabia, which is still considering an invitation to join the bloc. Mixed Economic Growth Prospects for Major Nations in 2024 Economic growth projections by the IMF for major nations are mixed, with the majority of G7 and BRICS countries forecasted to have ...
Image Source: Pexels S&P 500 Aggregate Estimates and Revisions The 24Q1 Y/Y adjusted blended earnings growth estimate is 7.4%. If the energy sector is excluded, the growth rate for the index is 7.0%. Please note that the 24Q1 year-over-year growth rate for Bristol Myers Squibb reflects an approximate $12 billion one-time charge related to its acquisition of Karuna Therapeutics. When including this one-time item, the S&P 500 24Q1 earnings growth rate declines to 4.3%. Of the 190 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date for 24Q1, 78.4% reported above analyst expectations. This compares to a long-ter...
Image courtesy of 123rf.com The US economy grew at a slower-than-expected pace in the first quarter of 2024, with the gross domestic product (GDP) increasing at an annualized rate of 1.6%, falling short of the projected 2.2%. The lackluster growth was primarily attributed to a significant slowdown in consumer spending and reduced federal government spending. US GDP Grew Slower than Expected in Q1 2024 The GDP report revealed that businesses reduced their inventories, which detracted approximately 0.9 percentage points from the overall growth rate. The gap between exports and imports also widened, with imports increasing and exports slightly...
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) was last seen down a whopping 620 points, pacing for its biggest single-day percentage drop since March 2023. Smaller-than-expected gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the first quarter is weighing on Wall Street, with the Nasdaq Composite (IXIC) also down triple digits while the S&P 500 Index (SPX) carries a hefty midday deficit of its own.Plus, consumer prices saw a first-quarter rise of 3.4%, much higher than the 1.8% jump analysts anticipated, underscoring the persistently high inflationary environment. These data points once more bring the Federal Reserve’s interest rate stance int...
Image Source: Pexels The FTSE 100 in Britain reached a new all-time high on Thursday, driven by a surge in miner Anglo American’s stock following a buyout offer from BHP Group. Additionally, investors were pleased with the strong financial results from several leading companies such as Unilever, AstraZeneca, and Barclays. Following BHP’s announcement of a buyout offer for Anglo American, the London-listed miner’s shares soared by 12.7% to their highest level in nine months, valuing the company at 31.1 billion pounds ($38.84 billion). If successful, this deal would establish the world’s largest copper miner, accounting...
Image Source: Unsplash Snap (SNAP) is expected to report results of its first quarter on Thursday, October 25, with a conference call scheduled for 5:30 pm EDT. What to watch for: GUIDANCE THE BIGGEST UNKNOWN: BofA lowered the firm’s price target on Snap to $14 from $16, while keeping a Neutral rating on the shares. The firm expects a “modest beat” in Q1, aided by healthy advertising environment, but views Q2 revenue guidance as “the biggest unknown and the most important driver of post-call stock performance,” BofA tells investors in a preview note. In that regard, the firm views Meta’s (META) outloo...
Money Supply is a very important indicator. It helps show how tight or loose current monetary conditions are regardless of what the Fed is doing with interest rates. Even if the Fed is tight, if Money Supply is increasing, it has an inflationary effect.One key metric shown below is the “Wenzel” 13-week annualized money supply figure. It was made popular by the late Robert Wenzel who tracked the metric weekly as an indicator of where the economy might be headed. In 2020, the Fed started reporting the data monthly instead of weekly. It should also be noted that Money Supply data can be heavily revised in future months. Recen...
Most of the commentary you will read about Q1 GDP that was released this morning will be about the core coincident components. For that, I will simply outsource to Harvard’s Prof. Jason Furman: “much of the slowdown was in non-inertial items like inventories (-0.35pp) and net exports (-0.86pp). The better signal of final sales to private domestic purchasers was 3.1%.” I agree.With that out of the way, as usual, my focus is instead on what the leading indicators contained in the report can tell us about the months ahead. There are two such long leading indicators: private residential fixed investment (basically, housing) as a share of G...