Last night and this morning, under multiple pressures from giant financial reports, Federal Reserve resolutions, and upcoming employment data, the US stock market entered a "standby mode" as usual - technology stocks that had previously risen more had a "preventive decline". As for the S&P 500 index and Dow Jones index, which have remained stable, the latter continues to break new historical closing highs.
But the problem is that there were some issues with the financial reports of technology stocks after Tuesday's close, with Google and AMD plummeting and Microsoft falling slightly. According to this trend, there will be more pressure at the opening tonight. Even after the closing, there were incidents where Musk had already fully received the option incentive and was ruled invalid by the court. Tesla, which had just stabilized in the past two days, also experienced a post market decline of about 3%.
If technology stocks can't hold up, tonight we can only see Powell's performance. As a background event for the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision, Senator Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown wrote to Powell on Tuesday, calling on the Federal Reserve Chairman to "cut interest rates as soon as possible.". Similar to Trump back then, the Democratic Party is now making more and more small moves to pressure Powell.
In terms of commodities, the most important event yesterday was Saudi Aramco's announcement of receiving a government order to suspend the expansion of oil production capacity. Affected by this, international oil prices have resumed their upward trend since the New Year.
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[IMF raises global growth expectations for this year]
The IMF released its latest World Economic Outlook report on Tuesday, which raised its global growth forecast for 2024 to 3.1%, which is 0.2 percentage points higher than its expected 2.9% in October last year. The report states that the main reason for the upward adjustment is that the United States and some large emerging markets and developing economies have shown stronger resilience than expected. The expected growth rate for 2025 remains the same as before, at 3.2%.
Biden personally acknowledges that a retaliatory plan has been finalized
According to official White House records of the President's speech, before departing to Florida on Tuesday to raise funds, Biden confirmed to reporters that he had made a decision on retaliation for the death of the US military in an attack. Regarding Biden's statement, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby further explained on Tuesday that the United States may adopt a tiered response, which may involve multiple actions rather than a single one.
Iraqi Militia Forces Announce Suspension of Attacks on US Forces
The Iraqi "Hezbollah Brigade" (Kata'ib Hezbollah), suspected by the United States of being associated with the attack on Jordanian military camps, issued a statement on Tuesday suspending military operations against US forces in the region. The statement stated that the organization does not want to embarrass the Iraqi government regarding the reasons for suspending the attack.
After Google and AMD released financial reports, Microsoft plummeted slightly
After Tuesday's trading session, Alphabet (Google) released its latest quarterly report, which exceeded market expectations with revenue of $86.3 billion (+13% year-on-year) and net profit of $20.7 billion (+52% year-on-year). But the revenue growth rate of the advertising business is only 11%, and the figure of $65.5 billion is also slightly lower than market expectations. As of press release, Google fell nearly 6% after market hours.
The problem with AMD is slightly more serious. The company's revenue of $6.2 billion and EPS of 77 cents in the previous quarter were both in line with market expectations. But the revenue guidance for the first quarter of this year is only 5.4 billion US dollars (± 300 million US dollars), while the market expectation is 5.7 billion US dollars. So the company's stock price also fell by nearly 6% after trading.
The overall financial report of Microsoft, the "stock king" in the US, exceeded expectations, with a revenue of $62 billion and a net profit of $2.93 per share. The closely watched cloud services revenue was $33.7 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of 24%. Azure's growth rate of 30% was also higher than the company's guidance and analyst expectations. As of the time of writing, Microsoft's stock price fell 0.65% after trading.
"AI grabbing jobs" becomes a reality, UPS announces 12000 layoffs
UPS announced 12000 layoffs after releasing its financial report on Tuesday. The company stated that the increase in labor costs and the decrease in logistics demand have resulted in the 2023 financial report and 2024 guidance falling short of expectations. What is even more heart wrenching for workers is that UPS has publicly stated that AI and the automation brought by AI will replace many of the laid-off positions, even if logistics demand increases in the future, these positions will not return. Due to poor performance, UPS closed down 8.20% on Tuesday.
Musk's $55 billion salary incentive plan was declared invalid by the court
According to the latest news prior to publication, a Delaware judge in the United States ruled that Tesla's massive option reward program granted to Musk in 2018 was unfair. Musk has already received all the rewards, with a total value of over 55 billion US dollars. Judge McCormick wrote in the ruling that both the plaintiff and defendant will negotiate the final order form for the execution of this ruling and submit a joint letter to determine all issues, including the cost issues that need to be resolved, in order to resolve the matter during the trial phase.
Affected by this, as of the time of writing, Tesla has fallen by over 3% after market hours. After the verdict was announced, Musk responded on social media that he should not register a company in Delaware.
According to a survey, iPhone shipments may decrease by 10% -15% this year
Renowned technology analyst Guo Minggui said on Tuesday that according to his latest supply chain survey, Apple has lowered its upstream semiconductor component shipments for iPhone shipments in 2024 to about 200 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 15%. This could also make Apple the most severely declining major global manufacturer. Affected by this, Apple fell 1.92% on Tuesday, marking its fifth consecutive trading day of decline.
Compared to Apple, Samsung, which has just released the "AI Phone" Galaxy S24 series, has raised its expected shipment volume for this year.