The major averages slipped on Friday as investors pored over a flurry of earnings results and a robust profit beat from e-commerce giant Amazon.
The S&P 500 fell 0.6%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 150 points. Nasdaq Composite dropped about 0.75%.
Amazon, the last of Wall Street’s mega-cap tech companies to publish results, reported a record first-quarter profit. The Seattle-based firm saidprofits more than tripled to $8.1 billionand January-to-March sales soared 44% to $108 billion. The results blew past Wall Street expectations with the company earning$15.79 per share vs. the consensus estimate of $9.54.
Amazon’s results showed demand remained strong for its massive online retail business even as the economy started to open up some. Shares rose more than 1%, but that was not enough to lift sentiment for the whole market.
Twitter, meanwhile, moved in the opposite direction onuser growth results and second-quarter revenue guidancethat fell short of analysts’ forecasts. The social media platform said monetizable daily active users totaled 199 million during the three months ended March 31 and reported per-share earnings of 16 cents. Twitter plunged 14%.
Apple was coming under some slight pressure in the premarket afterthe European Union said the company’s App Storewas breaching its competition rules. The shares were down 0.7%.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Colgate-Palmolive are reporting earnings on Friday before the bell. Chevron shares fell afterquarterly EPS failed to exceed expectations. Colgate-Palmolive rose 1.5% in premarket trading after beating on the top and bottom lines of its quarterly results.
Twitter and Amazon’s equity performance should influence the S&P 500 during the week’s final day of trading. The indexclosed at record levels on Thursdayon the heels of blowout earnings results from Apple and Facebook.
TheDow Jones Industrial Averageended the regular session up 0.7%, while theS&P 500advanced just under 0.7% to finish the day at 4,211.47, a new closing high. The tech-heavyNasdaq Composite, which began the day up 1%, underperformed with a gain of just over 0.2%.
So far this week, the S&P 500 is up 0.75%, the Dow is up less than 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite is up 0.47%.
March spending jumped a better-than-expected 4.2%. Personal incomes surged by a massive 21.1% amid more fiscal stimulus.
The PCE price index for March increased 0.5% month-over-month and 2.3% on a year-over-year basis. The core PCE, excluding food and energy, rose 0.4% for March and 1.8% year-over-year. The PCE inflation metric is watched closely by the Federal Reserve and Chairman Jerome Powell warned earlier in the week it may show a transitory increase in prices.
The inflation numbers apparently weren’t as high as feared as the 10-year yield remained flat after the numbers were released.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters that the central bank would need to see inflation sustained about 2% “for some time” before it moved to rein in its supportive asset purchases and near-zero interest rates.
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