Morning Preview: April 17, 2023

Auto PostDaily Market Report

Early Look

Monday, April 17, 2023

Futures

Up/Down

%

Last

Dow

19.00

0.06%

34,056

S&P 500

2.25

0.07%

4,166

Nasdaq

0.50

0.01%

13,182

 

 

U.S. futures looking higher to start the week as attention likely turns from interest rates to quarterly earnings, with a heavy dose of bank earnings this week (especially in regional banks) as well as a handful of tech leaders including Tesla and Netflix. For last week, the S&P rose 0.79%, the Dow added 1.19%, and the Nasdaq gained 0.29% as stocks add to their 2023 gains. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index rose 21 points to 28,514, the Shanghai Index gained 47 points to 3,385, and the Hang Seng Index advanced 343 points to 20,782. In Europe, the German DAX is up a few points to 15,816, while the FTSE 100 rises 30 points to 7,903. Not a big day for economic data with only a couple of non-inflationary related data points expected Monday. A couple of early data points in the tech sector (TSM, AAPL headlines) and one big M&A report in the Pharma space (MRK acquires RXDX), but overall quiet markets early.

 

Market Closing Prices Yesterday

·     The S&P 500 Index dropped -8.71 points, or 0.21%, to 4,137.51.

·     The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell -144.38 points, or 0.42%, to 33,885.31.

·     The Nasdaq Composite slipped -42.81 points, or 0.35%, to 12,123.47.

·     The Russell 2000 Index declined -15.53 points, or 0.86% to 1,781.16.

 

Economic Calendar for Today

·     8:30 AM ET          Empire Fed Manufacturing for April…est. (-18.0)

·     10:00 AM ET        NAHB Housing Market Index for April…est. 44 (prior 44)

·     4:00 PM ET           Net Long-term TIC Flows for February

 

Earnings Calendar:

·     Earnings Before the Open: GLGI GNTY LASE MTB SCHW STT

·     Earnings After the Close: CFB ELS FBK INVO JBHT MARK PNFP SFBS

 

Other Key Events:

·     American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), 4/14-4/19, in Orlando, FL

·     Needham 22nd Annual Healthcare Conference (virtual), 4/17-4/20

·     China GDP for Q1 and Industrial Production and Retail Sales for March

 

 

Macro

Up/Down

Last

Nymex

-0.35

82.17

Brent

-0.40

85.91

Gold

4.40

2,020.20

EUR/USD

-0.0016

1.0982

JPY/USD

0.20

133.97

10-Year Note

+0.012

3.5375%

 

 

World News

·     China’s central bank kept its key policy rates unchanged on Monday, while the People’s Bank of China injected 170 billion yuan ($24.74 billion) of liquidity into the banking system via its one-year medium-term lending facility at an interest rate of 2.75%.

 

Sector News Breakdown

Consumer

·     Penn Entertainment (PENN) downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at JMP Securities.

·     Xpeng (XPEV) shares rise after unveiling on Sunday a new vehicle platform developed in house which the co said will cut development and manufacturing costs; Smart Electric Platform Architecture (SEPA) 2.0 will help XPEV slash powertrain and battery costs by 25%.

 

Energy, Industrials and Materials

·     ConocoPhillips (COP) downgraded to Neutral at Mizuho while lowering PT by ~11% to $128.

·     Ovintiv (OVV) downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo.

 

Financials

·     Bank credit at all U.S. Commercial banks edges up to $17.32 trln in week ending April 5, vs $17.31 trln in prior week: Fed data, not seasonally adjusted. Loans and leases at all U.S. commercial banks ticked down to $12.06 trln in latest week vs $12.07 trln in prior week. Deposits at top 25 U.S. banks rose to $10.78 trln in week ending April 5, vs $10.75 trln in prior week – Fed Data.

·     M&T Bank (MTB) Q1 EPS $4.01 vs. est. $3.99; Q1 total deposits $159.1B at quarter end; provision for credit losses was $120 million, compared with $10 million last year. Net loan charge-offs for the quarter were $70 million, compared with $7 million a year ago.

·     JPMorgan Chase (JPM) credit card delinquency rate 0.88% at March end vs 0.88% at Feb end and the credit card charge-off rate 1.62% in March vs 1.33% in Feb.

·     Equitable Holdings (EQH), Corebridge Financial (CRBG), Globe Life (GL), Primerica (PRI), Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), Unum Group (UNM), and Voya Financial (VOYA), among life insurance stocks Barron’s called inexpensive stocks that can be good values.

·     PacWest Bancorp (PACW) long-term issuer default rating was downgraded to BB+ from BBB- by Fitch.

·     HIVE Blockchain (HIVE) produced 282 Bitcoin in the month of March 2023, from ASIC and GPU mining operations, representing an average of 91 Bitcoin Per Exahash, with an average hashrate of 3.09 EH/s; — HIVE Produced an average of 9.1 BTC per day in March 2023.

·     An investor group backed by CVC Capital Partners is in advanced talks to acquire Middle Eastern credit card processor Network International Holdings Plc for $2.5 billion – Bloomberg.

 

Healthcare

·     Merck & Co. (MRK) agreed to acquire Prometheus Biosciences Inc. (RXDX) for $200 per share, in a deal valued at $10.8 billion at a roughly 75% premium, in a move that could give the drug­maker promising immune disease treatments. https://on.mktw.net/3ojeSyr

·     Moderna Inc. (MRNA) and Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) cancer vaccine combo showed promising results in a key study, reducing the risk of recurrence or death by 44%. About 79% of melanoma patients in a 157-person trial who were treated with Moderna’s personalized mRNA-4157 (V940) therapy in combination with Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda were cancer-free after 18 months, compared with 62% of patients who received only Keytruda.

·     23andMe Holding Co. (ME) announced results from the Phase 1 portion of its Phase 1/2a study evaluating 23ME-00610, an investigational antibody targeting CD200R1.

·     Vaxcyte (PCVX) announced positive results from the VAX-24 Phase 2 study in adults aged 65 and older, as well as data from the full six-month safety assessment and prespecified pooled immunogenicity analyses from both the Phase 2 study in adults aged 65 and older and the prior Phase 1/2 study in adults aged 18-64.

 

Technology, Media & Telecom

·     Taiwan Semi (TSM) plans to reduce 2023 CAPEX from its previously communicated range of $32b-$36b, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter – per Economic Daily News (watch semi equipment names AMAT, ASML, LRCX, KLAC on capex headlines).

·     Alphabet (GOOGL) shares looking lower after NYTimes reports After learning Samsung was considering replacing Google (GOOGL) with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing as the default search engine on its devices back in March, Google began to “panic,” https://nyti.ms/3UEfASV

·     Dell Technologies (DELL), Wolfspeed (WOLF) both downgraded to Neutral from Overweight, Cepton (CPTN), Teradyne (TER) downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JPMorgan while firm upgraded HP Inc. (HPQ) and Lumentum (LITE) to Overweight.

·     Apple’s (AAPL) India sales near $6 billion as CEO Tim Cook begins retail push – Bloomberg.

·     Taiwan Semi (TSM) upgraded to Positive from Neutral at Susquehanna with a $126 price target saying that a “worst-case earnings scenario” is now reflected in investor expectations.

·     VanEck said Friday that it will implement a 2-for-1 split of its VanEck Semiconductor exchange-traded fund (SMH). The ETF is expected to begin trading on a split-adjusted basis on May 4, meaning it will start trading that day at half the price implied by the May 3 close.

·     Qualcomm (QCOM) announces new IoT chips for performance-intense and industrial apps – Digitimes reports.

·     Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. is nearing a deal to acquire the company behind the “Angry Birds” mobile game for about $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter – WSJ.

·     Global smartphone application processor (AP) shipments are set to come to 1.114 billion units in 2023, down 11.8% on year, mainly due to declining smartphone shipments and slow AP inventory depletion – Digitimes.

_________________________________________________________________

Market commentary provided by Hammerstone Markets, Inc, a firm separate from and not affiliated with Regal Securities. Regal Securities has not participated in the creation of the content, and does not explicitly or implicitly endorse the content.

Live Trading

Open an Account

Paper Trading

Register