The stock markets in the United States rallied driven by equities in the technology sector led by Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft Corporation, which posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings. The Dow Jones added 0.90%, the S&P 500 climbed1.10%, and the NASDAQ increased 2.27% today.
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In an interview with Bloomberg, Vincent Delisle, portfolio strategist at Scotia Capital said, “It’s great news to have these gorillas beat estimates. Anytime you have Google, Microsoft, and Amazon up, it will balance out some of the weaker and more lackluster numbers recently.”
Delisle also said, “The market wants to feel good, and it’s a cherry on top with these trademark companies beating estimates.”
On the other hand, Christian Gattiker, head of research at Julius Baer Group said, “It’s been kind of full house this week, every day some good news. It’s been quite a mix, from the corporate side and the central banks. It looks like the whole monetary easing is heading into another round.”
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced its decision to reduce its one-year lending rate from 4.6% to 4.35% and its one-year deposit rate from 1.75% to 1.5%. The PBOC also lowered its reserve requirements for all banks by 50 basis points and implemented an extra 50 basis points reduction for certain institutions.
[drizzle]China boosted its monetary easing before the anticipated new stimulus from the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan.
George Magnus, a senior independent economic adviser to UBS Group, commented, “Clearly the People’s Bank of China is on a mission to ease policy and has been for a year. With the economy losing momentum, deflation embedded in the corporate sector and rebalancing making limited headway, the central bank is being directed to ease monetary policy further. Of course, this isn’t the end of the road yet.”
U.S. Markets
- Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) – 17, 646.97 (+0.90%)
- S&P 500- 2,075.16 (+1.10%)
- NASDAQ- 5,031.86 (+2.27%)
- Russell 2000- 1,165.67 (+0.97%)
European Markets
- EURO STOXX 50 Price EUR- 3,425.81 (+2.17%)
- FTSE 100 Index- 6,376.28 (+0.44%)
- Deutsche Borse AG German Stock Index DAX- 10,491.97 (+2.48%)
Asia-Pacific Markets
- Nikkei 225- 18,825.30 (+2.11%)
- Hong Kong Hang Seng Index- 23,151.94 (+1.34%)
- Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 Index- 3,571.24 (+1.33%)
Stocks in Focus
The stock price of Amazon.com climbed 6.23% to $599.03 per share. The e-commerce giant posted outstanding financial results— a profit of $79 million or $0.17 per share on $25.36 in revenue, an increase of 23%. Analysts expected the company to report a loss of $0.13 per share on $24.91 billion in revenue. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is now the third wealthiest man in the United States.
The Class A and Class C shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google surged after the search engine giant delivered non-GAAP earnings of $7.35 per share on $18.7 billion revenue. Analysts expected the company to report non-GAAP earnings of $7.21 per share on $18.53 billion in revenue.
GOOGL shares (ClassA) were up 5.61% to $719.33 a piece, and GOOG shares (Class C) shares surged more than 7.7% to $702.00 each.
Facebook crossed the $100 mark today. The stock price of the social network giant closed $102.19 per share, up by 2.53%—bringing its market capitalization to approximately $282 billion. Tim Ghriskey, managing director and chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management, commented that Facebook showed that it could make significant money, and established itself as a force.
Microsoft shares rebounded 10.08% $52.87 per share. The company reported earnings of $0.67 per share on $21.7 billion in revenue. Analysts expected the company to post earnings of $0.59 per share on $21 billion in revenue. Microsoft announced that its Windows 10 adoption reached 110 million devices.
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