Stock Market Today Mid-Morning Updates
On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up by over 300 points as investors digest Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) earnings today and await Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech today, who will talk at 1:00 p.m. ET during the International Monetary Fund Debate on the Global Economy. This comes as, despite market expectations for a series of aggressive interest rate hikes, the Fed in recent days has talked down on making any dramatic moves.
Today, Blackstone (NYSE: BX) is up by over 3% after the private equity firm reported better-than-expected profit and revenue for its first quarter. This quarter’s results were driven by its real estate and credit operations. AT&T (NYSE: T) also reported strong earnings today, with an adjusted earnings per share of $0.63, $0.04 above consensus estimates. Shares of Xerox (NASDAQ: XRX), however, were down by over 15% after it missed its earnings. The office equipment maker was affected by inflation pressures and supply chain issues.
Among the Dow Jones leaders, shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) are up by 1.87% today while Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is also up by 1.83%. Meanwhile, Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Nike (NYSE: NKE) are trading higher on Thursday. Among the Dow financial leaders, Visa (NYSE: V) is up by 2.14% while JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) is also up by 0.57%.
Shares of EV leader Tesla are up by 10.13% on Thursday. Rival EV companies like Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN) are down by 2.46%. Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID) is up by 0.86% today. Chinese EV leaders like Nio (NYSE: NIO) and Xpeng Motors (NYSE: XPEV) are trading lower today.
Dow Jones Today: U.S. Treasury Yields Climbs Ahead Of Powell’s Speech
Following the stock market opening on Thursday, the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq are trading higher at 1.01%, 0.81%, and 1.23% respectively. Among exchange-traded funds, the Nasdaq 100 tracker Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) is up by 1.43% while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: SPY) is also up by 1.04%.
The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield is currently at an elevated high of 2.88% in recent months. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will be speaking on the global economy at an IMF debate after the IMF had cut its global economic growth forecast on Tuesday, for both 2022 and 2023. This is largely due to the disruption that is to come of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Today, the mayor of the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko says that buses have not yet arrived to begin evacuating citizens. According to a report by the International Organization for Migration, more than 7.7 million people have been internally displaced in Ukraine due to Russia’s invasion.
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Tesla Stock Sees Electrifying Gains After Blowout Quarterly Financial Report
For today’s series of earnings-related news, Tesla iis among the heavy hitters gaining attention. By and large, the company is looking at stellar figures in its first fiscal quarter release yesterday. Diving right in, the electric vehicle (EV) firm continues to race past the competition at breakneck speed. For the quarter, it is boasting earnings of $3.22 per share on revenue of $18.76 billion. To put things into perspective, This is versus Wall Street forecasts of $2.26 and $17.8 billion respectively.
As you can imagine, this overall solid performance from Tesla stems from its booming automotive sales. On this front, the company raked in a total of $16.86 billion for the quarter. Year-over-year, this adds up to a massive 87% leap. Additionally, Tesla also notes that its automotive gross margins for the quarter are up at 32.9%. After considering the company’s aggressive manufacturing capacity expansion efforts, this is all understandable. Evidently, over the past month, Tesla launched two new mega factories, massive production facilities. These would be its Giga Berlin and Giga Texas plants. Across the two Giga’s, Tesla is projecting a total annual production rate of one million units once production ramps up.
For one thing, all this could further serve to help Tesla maintain its current momentum. After all, the company did post back-to-back record quarterly deliveries over the past two quarters. Throughout the first quarter of the year alone, Tesla delivered over 310,000 units.
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Airline Stocks In Focus As Soaring Travel Demand Bolsters 2022 Outlooks
In other mobility-related news, some of the top airline stocks around are coming out the gate strong today. For the most part, this is likely thanks to the likes of United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAL) and American Airlines (NASDAQ: AAL). To begin with, United saw a quarterly loss of $4.24 per share on revenue of $7.57 billion in its latest quarterly financial update yesterday. For reference, this is in comparison to consensus estimates of a $4.22 loss and $7.68 billion respectively. Despite falling short on both of these metrics, investors appear to be more than keen on UAL stock today. This is apparent as the company’s shares are up by over 11% now. More on this later.
At the same time, American posted commendable results in its first-quarter earnings call earlier today as well. In it, the airline firm saw a loss of $2.32 per share, better than Wall Street forecasts of a $2.40 loss. Moreover, the company also topped consensus revenue expectations of $8.826 billion with sales of $8.9 billion this quarter. Likewise, AAL stock is currently up by a notable 7% at today’s opening bell.
In the larger scheme of things, investors are likely to focus on both companies’ outlooks for the current fiscal year. On one hand, United expects to turn a profit by 2022. On the other hand, American is already forecasting a similar move in the current quarter. The company’s March 2022 revenue is also notably above 2019 levels already. Both companies are citing a strong return in demand for travel as key growth drivers for these outlooks. With all this in mind, I could see airline stocks being in the limelight today.
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