The market fell this week. The market was closed on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The stock rebounded from Friday’s early week losses, but it wasn’t enough as the S&P 500 fell just under 0.7% in his week.
Updated inflation and housing data continue as the earnings season continues with several heavyweights such as Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), United Airlines (UAL) and Netflix (NFLX). Highlighted economic report for the week.
Alphabet (GOOG), meanwhile, continues the trend of big tech to cut its workforce, with Google announcing plans to lay off 12,000 employees or about 6% of its total workforce. Meanwhile, Moderna (MRNA) got some positive news with his experimental RSV vaccine showing 84% efficacy against respiratory symptoms in the elderly.
decline in producer prices
New producer price data from December’s Producer Price Index (PPI) showed that overall producer prices fell 0.5% last month. The analyst had expected prices to fall by just 0.1%, but his massive 7.9% drop in energy prices sent the overall figure down significantly. In fact, core prices (excluding food and energy) actually lived up to expectations, as he rose 0.1% in December.
Both figures are still down from November’s 0.2% gain as price pressures appear to have finally subsided. Only unprecedented rate hikes and overall tightening policies have gotten us this far.
housing data
Outside of the PPI report, new housing data highlighted economic reports on housing starts, building permits and existing home sales in December, all released towards the end of the week. The data were mixed, but overall positive as housing starts and existing sales exceeded expectations with his 1.382 million starts and 4.02 million sales.
Alternatively, building permits underperformed at 1.33 million compared to the expected 1.37 million. Finally, all housing data were down from his November, which had 1.401 million housing starts, 1.351 million permits and 4.08 existing sales.
Meanwhile, initial unemployment claims fell well short of estimates with 190,000 claims, compared to an expected 212,000 after reporting 205,000 new claims the previous week.
Earnings
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley’s earnings season got off to a rough start. Both underperformed earnings expectations, Goldman underperformed, and investment banking and asset management earnings fell sharply. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley beat earnings expectations with record wealth management earnings.
United Airlines was able to maintain momentum for the airline after Delta Air Lines (DAL) beat estimates last week. United said it beat expectations and will continue to deliver a pre-tax margin of 9% in 2023.
Finally, Netflix ended a strong week despite missing earnings estimates. A massive increase in subscribers has pushed his stock up more than 8% after the report.
Overall, the S&P 500 was down 0.68%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.7% and the NASDAQ was up 0.55%.