With the last-minute jump before Friday’s closing, the three major U.S. indexes collectively turned red, temporarily stopping the continuous decline of the previous two days. The difficult trend is enough to show that under heavy pressure, the market is still in the struggling stage of the upcoming radical interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve and the uncertain geographical situation.
(minute chart of three major stock indexes, source: tradingview)
The good news on Friday is that the impact of covid-19 virus on the U.S. job market continues to be on the track of repair. Seema Shah, chief market strategy analyst of Xin’an global investment, said that although the non-agricultural sector in March was slightly lower than the expected value (430000 vs 490000), it can be said that the trace of covid-19 has been nearly eliminated only from the perspective of employment data. The unemployment rate is only slightly higher than that before the epidemic, and the number of people in temporary unemployment has returned to the level before March 2020.
It is worth noting that the first April is usually the best month for US stocks in a year. Sam Stovall, chief investment strategy analyst at CFRA, explained that since World War II, the probability of the S & P 500 index rising in April has reached 70%, with an average increase of 1.7%. By contrast, the S & P 500 index rose an average of 0.7% in all months.
market dynamics
As of the close, the S & P 500 index rose 0.34% to 454586; The NASDAQ index rose 0.29% to 1426150; The Dow Jones index rose 0.40% to 3481827.
From the perspective of industry concept, concepts such as China concept stocks, gene editing, coal and gold rose higher, while freight logistics, OLED, luxury goods, semiconductor and other sectors fell higher.
hot stock performance
US technology stocks were mixed, with apple down 0.17%, Tesla up 0.65%, Amazon up 0.35%, Google a up 0.78%, Netflix down 0.30% and Microsoft up 0.36%; The trend of the concept of economic restart was better than the market. American Airlines fell 0.05%, United Airlines fell 1.25%, Royal Caribbean cruise fell 0.14%, Norwegian Cruise fell 0.27% and Boeing fell 0.39%.
In terms of Chinese stocks, NASDAQ China Jinlong index rose 4.70% on Friday, leading Alibaba and Tencent ADR rose 1.29% and 5.86% respectively, and star stocks such as Baidu, futu holdings, BiliBili and Netease all rose more than 6%.
company information
[hybrid motor car power, Toyota continues to press GM to lead the U.S. market in March]
On Friday local time, a number of car manufacturers released sales data in March this year. Among them, Japanese car company Toyota slightly beat GM’s 512846 with 514592 vehicles, ranking first in the U.S. market. It is worth mentioning that the sales data of the two car companies fell by 15% and 20% year-on-year respectively. Hybrid models, which account for a quarter of Toyota’s sales, fell only 3.9% in March, affected by the surge in oil prices.
[Amazon employees in New York voted to form a union]
Amazon employees in Staten Island, New York voted on April 1 local time to decide whether to establish an Amazon Union. According to Reuters, the vote count results released by the National Labor Relations Commission showed that 55% of the votes supported the establishment of trade unions. Amazon expressed disappointment at the result and said it would consider all options, including raising objections.
[JPMorgan analysts remove apple and Qualcomm from the watch list worried about the decline in smartphone consumption]
JPMorgan analysts removed apple and Qualcomm from the “watch list”, which includes the stocks most recommended by analysts. The bank said that due to the possible decline in consumer spending, the iPhone se may not meet the previous high sales expectations, and Apple’s software service revenue may also usher in a headwind; The weakening demand for medium and low-end Android phones will have an impact on Qualcomm.
It is worth mentioning that JPMorgan continued to maintain their buy rating based on the long-term potential of the two companies.
[Microsoft cloud service is targeted by EU antitrust regulation]
According to local media reports on Friday, EU antitrust regulators are asking Microsoft’s cloud service competitors, which may develop into a formal investigation. According to the questionnaire obtained by the media, the European Commission said that “according to the information available, Microsoft may use its potential dominant position in some software markets to prevent competition related to some cloud computing services”.
[pike Hannifin’s £ 6.3 billion acquisition is expected to be approved by the EU]
According to media reports, after Parker Hannifin, the leader of transmission and control industry, promised to sell a factory in the United States to the European Union, European antitrust regulators are ready to approve its request to acquire meggitt for £ 6.3 billion. However, British regulators are also investigating the acquisition. Meggitt, as a supplier of wheel and braking systems of the British air force, still has national security concerns in the UK.
[the good stock split didn’t last a day, and all the gains of more than 10% in the game post station were returned]
Affected by the announcement of increasing class a ordinary shares from 300 million shares to 1 billion shares after trading on Thursday, and some of them were split in the form of dividends, the well-known WSB concept stock game station rose by 10% at the opening of trading on Friday, but then fell rapidly and finally closed down by 0.95%.
