Earnings: Positive Results Ahead of Tesla

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, April 23. The Bottom Line segment of today’s podcast starts at (4:45) for listeners who want to skip ahead. Be sure to check out the brand new ‘One Year Ago Today’ segment at the bottom of this page.

State of Play

Stocks rallied yesterday, breaking a six-day losing streak for the S&P 500 (SPY 0.00%↑) and Nasdaq. Tech stocks were the biggest winners on the day as the Nasdaq gained more than 1%. No obvious catalyst for this. Perhaps investors were just tired of selling things and ran out of excuses to keep doing so. As we look at our board of indicators at 0635, there are no clear signs of direction even as earnings come in positive:

• Stock index futures are pointing to a higher open, led by tech as the Nasdaq is up 0.3% with S&P futures up a little less;

• Commodities are dropping. Copper is down 1.5% as gold and silver also give back 1.5% each. WTI crude oil is unchanged at $81.80/barrel;

• Bonds are unchanged with the 2-year yield sitting on 4.99% and the 10-year yielding 4.61%

• Cryptos aren’t doing anything either with Bitcoin trading around $66,000.

Earnings

It’s mostly about earnings today, with the main event being Tesla (TSLA 0.00%↑) after the close.

This morning we’ve already heard from several big-name companies:

• United Parcel Service (UPS 0.00%↑) reported mixed results but crucially reaffirmed guidance for the year and that stock is moving higher in the pre-market

• Pepsico (PEP 0.00%↑) beat top- and bottom-line estimates but is down a bit;

• Spotify (SPOT 0.00%↑) appears to have impressed investors and is up almost 5% at the time of this writing;

• General Motors (GM 0.00%↑) beat estimates and raised guidance and is up 2%;

• Novartis (NVS 0.00%↑) beat estimates and also raised guidance and is up 5%+ in early trading;

• General Electric (GE 0.00%↑) also beat estimates also raised guidance and is moving higher;

• JetBlue (JBLU 0.00%↑) results were mixed and that stock is moving lower in the pre-market.