Mid-Market Update: No transitory signs yet, Buy Apple (products), Port of LA goes 24/7, JPMorgan’s solid results

Just like William Shatner, US stocks went on a wild this morning.  Wall Street took a brief break to watch Star Trek’s William Shatner, a 90-year old legend set a record in space with a Blue Origin spaceflight.

The S&P 500 index declined after the latest inflation report  showed no signs of being transitory, prompting Treasury markets to anticipate a September Fed rate hike next year.  The Nasdaq was initially dragged down after reports that Apple could cut their iPhone 13 production targets for 2021 by as many as 10 million units.   Short-dated Treasuries jumped after the inflation report, while the 10-year and 30-year declined.

Despite above trend growth for 2022, stocks may struggle over the short-term on rising interest rate expectations from inflation fears, poor inventories for the holidays, and elevated energy prices.  A decline in long-end rates and expectations that Apple’s revenue shortfall in Q4 will just go to Q1 helped the Nasdaq post a modest gain.  Earnings took a backseat to the inflation report and reset of Fed rate hike expectations.  JPMorgan posted solid results, Delta warned Q4 might not be profitable given the surge in fuel prices, and BlackRock delivered robust results.

CPI

Rising food prices, energy costs, utilities, and new vehicles all confirmed what every American already knows… Inflation remains elevated. Core inflation mostly steadied but that was weighed down again over weakness in travel.  The transitory argument is weakening and that trend will continue to move forward Fed rate hike expectations.

Supply Chain

The White House announced that the Port of Los Angeles will switch to a 24/7 schedule to help ease the bottleneck issues.  Walmart, Fedex, UPS, Target, Samsung, Home Depot and more are expected to embrace the nonstop schedule.  The White House wants to make sure Americans are pleased with Biden’s agenda going into midterm elections next year and exceedingly high gas prices and backordered holiday presents will not bode well.

Apple

It seems semiconductor manufacturers Broadcom and Texas Instruments can’t meet Apple’s iPhone 13 demand, a sign that the chip shortage is nowhere near over and that the iPhone supercycle is alive and well.  Holiday shoppers that want to give the gift of iPhone 13 need to buy now.  Apple shares fell on the Bloomberg report that this year’s iPhone target might fall 10 million phones short due to supply chain issues.  Apple will still remain a favorite mega-cap tech stock as this only delays revenue from the fourth quarter to the next quarter.

JP Morgan

A solid earnings report from JPMorgan kicked off earnings season.  There was a lot of gold nuggets in this report, but lackluster loan growth and slowing trading revenue is why share prices are not higher.  Earnings impressed at $3.74, but when you exclude the reserve release it was only a six cent beat at $3.03.  Third quarter recovery of credit losses was the number everyone is focusing on, an impressive $1.53 billion improvement, significantly better than the consensus estimate of $17.9 million.

Adjusted revenue of $30.44 billion was a beat of the $29.86 billion estimate, led by better-than-expected results in investment banking, equities sales & trading, and a 7% increase in corporate & investing.  With no changes to the full-year outlook, the bank looks like it hasn’t seen any radical shifts to the outlook as the country comes out of the pandemic.  JPMorgan’s exposure to China’s property sector and fintech’s encroachment to Wall Street banking does not seem to pose that big of a risk just yet.

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Ed Moya

Ed Moya

Contributing Author at OANDA
With more than 20 years’ trading experience, Ed Moya was a Senior Market Analyst with OANDA for the Americas from November 2018 to November 2023. His particular expertise lies across a wide range of asset classes including FX, commodities, fixed income, stocks and cryptocurrencies. Over the course of his career, Ed has worked with some of the leading forex brokerages, research teams and news departments on Wall Street including Global Forex Trading, FX Solutions and Trading Advantage. Prior to OANDA he worked with TradeTheNews.com, where he provided market analysis on economic data and corporate news. Based in New York, Ed is a regular guest on several major financial television networks including CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Yahoo! Finance Live, Fox Business, cheddar news, and CoinDesk TV. His views are trusted by the world’s most respected global newswires including Reuters, Bloomberg and the Associated Press, and he is regularly quoted in leading publications such as MSN, MarketWatch, Forbes, Seeking Alpha, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Ed holds a BA in Economics from Rutgers University.