Contents
Dow Jones: 18,003.75 (+0.6%)
NASDAQ: 4,906.23 (-0.6%)
S&P 500: 2,091.58 (+0.5%)
Gold: 1,233.90 (+0.1%)
Copper: 227.6 (+5.7%)
Crude Oil: 43.18 (+7.0%)
The housing market slowed down in March after housing starts and permits came in weaker than February levels. Housing starts plunged 8.8% to 1.089 million from 1.194 million in February. Additionally, building permits fell 7.7% sequentially. However, both housing starts and building permits are up 14.2% and 4.6% year over year, respectively.
Manufacturing in the Philadelphia Federal Reserve District continues to show weakness after it contracted in April. The Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index fell from 12.4 in March to -1.6 in April driven by sharp declines in new orders and current shipments. The weakness reverses the gains made in March and takes the index back into the negative territory it has been in since January, 2016.
Crude Oil rose 7% to close at $43.18 per barrel following a drop in distillate stocks and IEA expectations of further declines in non-OPEC production. Commercial crude oil inventories (excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased 0.4% to 538.6 million barrels from 536.5 million the previous week. The national average retail regular gasoline price rose 3.3% to $2.137 from $2.069 per gallon the preceding week.
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) recorded a 17.4% increase in revenue for Q1 2016 YoY. Net income rose 19.7% while diluted EPS increased 18% to $6.02 from $5.10 the same quarter the previous year. Ad revenue was up 16.2%, Google websites revenue rose 20.1%, Network member’s websites (AdSense etc.) revenue increased 3.2%, other revenues (Google Play, Nexus devices) climbed 24% while other bets revenues grew 107.5%.
IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced total revenue and net income declines of 4.6% and 13.5%, respectively, for Q1 2016 YoY. Consequently, diluted EPS fell 14.3% to $2.09 from $2.44 YoY. Revenue was down across all business segments i.e. cognitive solutions (down 1.7%), global business services (down 4.3%), tech services & cloud platforms (down 1.5%), systems (down 21.8%), global financing (down 11.1%) and other (down 1.5%).
Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) posted a 4.0% fall in revenue and a 4.7% decline in net income for Q1 2016 YoY. Additionally, diluted EPS fell 2.9% to $0.34 from $0.35 the same quarter last year. Revenue was down in all regions (Latin America, Europe, Eurasia & Africa, and Asia Pacific) excluding North America. Global volume grew 2% driven by higher still beverage volume. Sparkling beverage volume was unchanged for the quarter.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) reported a 5.5% revenue drop and a 24.7% net income drop for Q3 2016 YoY. Diluted earnings per share fell 23.0% to $0.47 from $0.61 YoY. Revenue was up in the productivity and business processes (up 1%), personal computing (up 1%) and cloud services (up 3%) segments but down in the corporate segment (down 100%). Corporate was down due to deferred revenue (shifted to ratable revenue recognition) for Windows 10.
Tuesday April 26 — FOMC Meeting Announcement
Thursday, April 28 — Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
