Nasdaq gives up gains, threatens seventh consecutive day of declines

It’s a huge week for the Nasdaq with earnings from Tesla, Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, Intel and Snap. At the moment, the market is clearly worried and chipmakers are particularly soft.

The Nasdaq has fallen for six straight days and early gains today have evaporated with the index now trading flat.

Zooming out, there’s a saying that ‘bull markets go up the escalator and correct down the elevator’. That means that in bull markets, there are often steady gains interrupted by sharp corrections. That’s the kind of thing we’re seeing right now and it gives me confidence that we’re still in a bull market, despite the dismal mood.

We’ve also seen a handful of times in recent years where tech stocks sell ahead of earnings and then rally when they’re not as bad as feared. That said, the bar is high for some of these companies, particularly megacap tech and chipmakers. Last week, Netflix reported solid earnings but crumbled anyway and it’s down another 0.7% today.

A big problem is rising Treasury yields. The catalyst for tech is likely to be a turn lower in US economic data, and inflation in particular. There’s still plenty of reason to believe that will happen.

Here’s the Bank of America CFO:

“So you’re seeing the consumer hang there and continue to spend,
but spend at a level that’s more consistent with a more trend type of
economy and we will see all that play out over the sense of the next
quarter…if you just extended that through from the fourth quarter of
2019 to today, given that the economy is 30% larger, we kind of feel
like consumer is approaching that floor, so we’re still in this belief
that Q2 is going to be–Q3 may be the turning point for consumer. You
can see that slowing now.”

Here’s the CFO of American Express:

“Overall, while we do continue to see a softer spend environment

Here’s the Discover CFO:

“Sales slowed across categories with the largest decline occurring
in the everyday category, which includes supermarkets, gas and
wholesale clubs. While we continue to add new accounts, in general, we
are seeing card members spend less, particularly among lower-income
households which are most impacted by the cumulative effects of
inflation. Based on trends in the period, we expect sales to be flat to
slightly negative this year

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.