Fear!
He stock market riled in the past week, coming to a point where it could have closed out 3 straight weeks of losses, before a late week, before a Friday sell off caused the indices to close in the deep red. This is the Nasdaq's worst month since 2008 as the the S&P and the Nasdaq closing at lows for the year.
This happened amidst a slew of negative catalysts, the Fed's aggressiveness with their rate increases and monetary tightening, persistent inflation, COVID spike in China, the ongoing war in Ukraine and fears of a recession.
The GDP report for Q1 2022 came in at -1.4%. A recession occurs in theory when there is 2 straight quarters of negative growth.
Another FAANG bites the dust
Amazon is one of the companies that just reported their earnings for Q1 2022, and it was not a good one.
Amazon's stock price dropped over 14% on the day after they released their earnings, marking their worst day since 2006. They also released their first quarterly loss since 2015 as they realise losses from their venture into Rivian, a stock that went public late last year.
Amazon's revenue increased only 7% during the quarter, their slowest rate of groth since the dot-com bust in 2001, and forecast weak growth moving forward.
Elon goes again
After the Twitter board elected to take up a poison pill defence strategy to prevent Musk from obtaining more than 15% of the company's shares, it seems that Musk is looking to give another go at attempting to buy over the company.
This time, Musk is looking to submit a tender offer to the shareholders, and have already received significant funding to help secure the deal.
According to an updated filing of his takeover attempt, Musk has received $46.5B to help finance the deal, with $25.5B in debt financing and $21B in which he has stated to have committed in equity financing.
According to Musk, he only did this due to the lack of response from the board.
Elon loads his cannon
As Elon's acquisition of Twitter moves along, investors' fears of Elon selling his Tesla shares mount, and was realised in a filing released on Thursday that Elon has sold a total of 9.6 Million shares, or roughly $8.5 Billion worth of shares to help finance his planned takeover of Twitter.
He has stated he is not planning to sell anymore Tesla shares, but it did not help the fact that the stock price fell over 12% during his day of sale as selling pressure mounted.
This is also despite the fact that Tesla released superb earnings that sent the stock flying over 8% the day after.
Berkshire and warren report earnings
This week, we also see legendary investor Warren Buffett releasing earnings for their Q1 2022. It was not a pretty look as their earnings fell to $5.4 billion, down over 52% from the nearly $12 Billion that it earned in the same quarter last year. Similarly, it underperformed the analysts expectation of $6 Billion.
This is mainly due to their stock portfolio, which declined over $1.6 Billion as compared to the gain of nearly $5 Billion from the same period last year.
Upcoming events
Monday, 02 May
Singapore, China - Labor Day
Euro Zone - Manufacturing PMI (April)
United States - ISM Manufacturing PMI (April)
Tuesday, 03 May
Singapore - Eid al-Fitr
China - Labor Day
United Kingdom - Manufacturing PMI (April)
United States - JOLTs Job Openings (March)
Wednesday, 04 May
United States - ADP Nonfarm Employment Change (April)
United States - Imports / Exports
United States - Crude Oil Inventories
Thursday, 05 May
United States - Fed Interest Rate Decision
United Kingdom - Composite PMI / Services PMI (April)
United Kingdom - BoE Interest Rate Decision (May)
United States - Initial Jobless Claims
Friday, 06 May
United Kingdom - Construction PMI (April)
United States - Unemployment Rate (April)