Last week Stocks closed on a down note, as tech stocks led a broad retreat Friday. Major U.S. indexes were still higher on the month.
• If you are looking for a specific reason for Friday's decline, you don’t need look far. “Amazon is the culprit,” writes NatAlliance Securities’ Andrew Brenner. The online retailer posted a profit of $15.12 a share, but sales were below expectations and the company warned that Covid-19 vaccines would bring more consumers to bricks-and-mortar stores and away from its online bazaar. Amazon's disappointing results were read as a negative sign for other e-commerce companies and PayPal, eBay, and Etsy were all lower than the broad market.
• China's regulatory crackdown on some of the country's most popular companies has been dragging down market as well. Chinese indexes ended July with steep declines: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declined 1.35% Friday, for a monthly loss of 9.9%, while the Shanghai Composite dipped 0.4%, bringing its July decline to 5.4%. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index—which follows U.S.-listed Chinese tech—has tumbled more than 22% across July.
• Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management snapped up shares of Robinhood Markets, the parent company of a popular stock and crypto trading platform, hours after they made their debut on the Nasdaq exchange. According to the article published on Yahoo Finance The New York-based investment manager’s ARK fund bought 1.3 million Robinhood shares.
• The highlight on the economic calendar next week will be Jobs Friday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to show a gain of 625,000 nonfarm payrolls in July, following June's 850,000. The unemployment rate is seen holding just below 6%.
Earnings This week:
The parade of second-quarter results continues next week. No fewer than 143 S&P 500 companies are on deck to report, in addition to hundreds of small caps.
- Ferrari, Vornado Realty Trust, Take-Two Interactive Software, and Simon Property Group will get the ball rolling on Monday.
- Lyft, Alibaba Group Holding, Nikola, Under Armour, Eli Lilly, and Conoco¬Phillips release their results on Tuesday.
- Wednesday will be particularly busy: General Motors, Uber Technologies, Etsy, Electronic Arts, Western Digital, Roku, CVS Health, Kraft Heinz, and SoftBank all report.
- Beyond Meat, Yelp, Wayfair, Moderna, and ViacomCBS go on Thursday.
- DraftKings, Canopy Growth, and Tripadvisor will close the week on Friday.
IPO’s This week:
IPO market is not showing signs of slowing down as well as 10 new companies will be debuting this week.
