Facebook’s business continues to fire on all cylinders, even as the company faces growing scrutiny from regulators over its acquisitions and from critics for the role its platform may have played in spreading lies about the US presidential election.
The company said Wednesday that it posted a profit of $11.2 billion in the final three months of last year, an increase of more than 50% from the year prior. Facebook’s revenue rose 33% to roughly $28 billion during the quarter, showing the durability of its core advertising business despite the pandemic.
When combining Facebook’s various apps, including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, the company reported 3.3 billion monthly active users, an increase of 14% year-over-year.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement:
While Facebook ended the year on a strong note, it once again warned of challenges for the year ahead, including “the “evolving regulatory landscape” as well as looming iPhone software changes that it expects will hurt its advertising business.
Tesla capped its breakout year with a record profit that still fell short of analysts forecasts, sending its shares 6% lower in after-hours trading.
The electric car maker reported fourth quarter adjusted income of $903 million, excluding special items, more than double its earnings a year ago but still short of the $1.1 billion forecast by analysts. Net income was $270 million, well short of the $780 million estimated by Wall Street.
Still, the results capped a year of strong growth for the company despite the problems associated with Covid-19 pandemic:
Analysts have talked for at least a year about the potential for Apple’s first 5G iPhone to drive a “supercycle” of device sales. On Wednesday, Apple’s earnings report for the three months ended December 26 — the first since the iPhone 12 went on sale — offered an initial look at how actual sales are stacking up against that projection.
Strong iPhone sales pushed the company’s total quarterly revenue to a record $111.4 billion — well above the $103.3 billion Wall Street analysts had predicted. Apple (AAPL) posted earnings of $16.8 per diluted share, up 35% from the same period in the prior year.
iPhone sales were also even better than expected: Growing more than 17% year-over-year to nearly $65.6 billion, compared with the $59.8 billion analysts had expected. Apple executives last quarter had said they expected single-digit percentage growth in iPhone sales during the December quarter.
Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to investors ahead of the report:
At least one big bank is instructing its financial advisers to steer clear of making recommendations on GameStop and AMC amid the insane swings in those stocks, CNN Business has learned.
Wells Fargo banned its advisers from contacting clients to tell them to buy or sell GameStop (GME) and AMC (AMC).
“As of today, Wells Fargo Advisors is not allowing solicitation of those two securities,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
The decision was driven by the extreme volatility in GameStop and AMC, whose shares have skyrocketed after getting heavily promoted by Reddit’s Wall Street Bets community.
Wells Fargo’s clients can still call their advisers to initiate trades in those stocks, though. The decision only means that Wells Fargo’s 13,000 advisers cannot make recommendations about those two stocks.
It’s not clear how many other big banks are taking similar steps.
Representatives for Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan and UBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
US stocks fell sharply after the Federal Reserve said the economic recovery and job market have “moderated” due to the pandemic.
The Dow suffered its biggest loss since October, dragged down by weak results from Boeing (BA). Both the Dow and S&P 500 are now down year-to-date.
But GameStop (GME) and AMC (AMC), two stocks currently hot with the Reddit/Robinhood crowd, continued to surge as bulls are squeezing short sellers.
As stocks settle after the trading day, levels might still change slightly.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is neither shocked nor saddened by the Wall Street firms getting run over by Reddit-fueled trades in GameStop and AMC.
“For years, the same hedge funds, private equity firms, and wealthy investors dismayed by the GameStop trades have treated the stock market like their own personal casino while everyone else pays the price,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement Thursday.
A group of Reddit users have targeted GameStop (GME), AMC (AMC) and other stocks that are heavily bet against by short sellers. They have successfully sent the stocks skyrocketing – despite a lack of major fundamental news. And that has caused massive losses for some hedge funds and other market players.
“It’s not news that the stock market doesn’t reflect our actual economy,” Warren said.
The Democrat, who is the ranking member on the Senate subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer protection, used the incident to renew her call for a crackdown on Wall Street.
“It’s long past time for the SEC and other financial regulators to wake up and do their jobs,” Warren said, “and with a new administration and Democrats running Congress, I intend to make sure they do.”
We all want this pandemic to end. But the normally reserved Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell got all fired up at the end of his otherwise dry press conference Wednesday.
His message: Solve the damn vaccination problem.
“There’s been a lot of adapting – but you can’t adapt hotels, sporting venues, movie theaters, restaurants, bars. That’s millions and millions of people,” Powell said. (He added that he has had the first shot, but not the second, btw).
“And so you’re just going to have to defeat the pandemic, which as I mentioned, we have a plan to do that but we haven’t done it yet. We need to finish the job. It’s within our power to do that as a country this year. I would just urge that – I know people are working hard on that – but that is really the main thing about the economy is getting the pandemic under control, getting everyone vaccinated, getting people wearing masks and all that.
“That’s the single most important economic growth policy that we can have.”
‘Nuff said.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the future is uncertain as the economic recovery is growing weaker.
That’s not exactly music to investors’ ears.
“The economic dislocation has abandoned many lives and created great uncertainty about the future,” Powell said. “Something like 9 million people remain unemployed as a consequence of the pandemic. That’s as many people lost their jobs at the peak of the global financial crisis in the great recession. Many small businesses are under pressure and other needs to be addressed and the path ahead is still uncertain.”
All that talk of uncertainty sent stocks — which were already down a bunch — even lower.
With 30 minutes left to trade, the Dow was down 640 points, or 2%. The S&P 500 fell 2.7% and the Nasdaq was 2.9% lower.
Technically, if the Fed wanted to weigh in on the GameStop saga, it could. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed’s not considering that right now.
Under a provision called Regulation T, the Fed can set the rules brokerage firms like Robinhood and TD Ameritrade have for their customers. For example, the Fed could mandate that investors pay for stocks with cash rather than borrowed money – a step Robinhood took for GameStop and AMC today.
But Powell ruled that out.
“Remember, we’re focused on maximum employment, price stability, financial stability of, as I defined it, the broad financial sector,” said Powell. “Over the years we consult the fact we have that authority, but it’s not something we’re looking at right now at all.”
The White House is monitoring the GameStop price spike, according to Press Secretary Jen Psaki, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell says he doesn’t want to get into it. The Fed doesn’t have jurisdiction, he said.
But that didn’t stop him from speculating about why stocks have risen – even as he said he wouldn’t comment on individual stock prices.
“There are many things that go in, as you know, to setting asset prices,” Powell said. “If you look at what’s really been driving asset prices in the last couple of months, it isn’t monetary policy. It’s expectations about vaccines and also fiscal policy.”
Powell said he knows people believe the Fed sends stocks up or down, but he doesn’t believe that’s the case in the long run.
The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged Wednesday and again stressed it would use its “full range of tools” to support the US economy during the recovery, which has slowed in recent months.
Rising Covid-19 infections are weighing on the economy, which still remains far from its pre-pandemic strength. Renewed shutdowns in various states have again hit sectors, such as leisure and hospitality, most affected by the initial lockdowns last spring.
Meanwhile, the multi-month improvements in the labor market have turned sour: In December, the US economy lost 140,000 jobs.
“The path of the economy will depend significantly on the course of the virus, including progress on vaccinations,” the central bank said in a statement.
Robinhood is imposing restrictions on trading of GameStop and AMC after a mob of Reddit users sent the companies’ shares to the moon.
Robinhood, the free trading app that caters to millennials, has raised its margin requirements on both GameStop (GME) and AMC (AMC) to 100%. That applies to both the initial margin requirement and maintenance.
Margin accounts at brokerage firms allow investors to buy stocks (and other securities) with borrowed money. However, brokers must require investors to maintain a minimum amount of equity as long as they hold onto the stock. FINRA requires a 25% minimum maintenance margin. If the equity dips below that level, investors face a “margin call” that requires them to deposit more funds or securities.
The fact that Robinhood has now increased that threshold to 100% signals the brokerage app is concerned about the extreme volatility in GameStop and elsewhere.
“They don’t want to take a hit if the stock goes from $300 to $50 in a minute – which is possible,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of trading at Themis Trading.
Robinhood’s maintenance margin requirement is just 25% for less volatile stocks such as ExxonMobil (XOM) and Bank of America (BAC).
Oil industry executives slammed President Joe Biden’s moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands as an attack on the industry that will backfire.
“This is bad for our economy. It’s bad for our national security. It’s bad for our environment and for local communities,” Mike Sommers, the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told reporters Wednesday.
Biden is expected to order a freeze of new leases on federal lands and waters as a way to fight the climate crisis.
Sommers said that while the API shares Biden’s goal of addressing climate change, the order is “nothing more than an import more oil policy that will weaken US energy leadership, hamper the economic recovery and undermine national security.”
Officials from New Mexico, a state that could be hit particularly hard by the leasing freeze, warned of a hit to local revenue.
“Our state’s education budgets depend heavily on oil and gas revenue,” said Ryan Flynn, president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.
Flynn said New Mexico accounts for 57% of federal onshore oil production and 31% of federal onshore natural gas production. The state gets about $1 billion in revenue from that federal fossil fuels production.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell could give a “pat on the back” for President Joe Biden’s stimulus plan during this afternoon’s press conference, David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, told Christine Romans on the CNN Business digital live show Markets Now. Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.
Kelly expects the Fed to keep interest rates low at its monetary policy update at 2pm ET. The press conference will begin at 2:30 pm ET.
Supporting the economy through the recession is vital to get the nation back on track, so getting more stimulus passed shouldn’t be a major problem. The bigger question: what comes afterwards?
“The question is do you have the intestinal fortitude to raise interest rates, to raise taxes when the economy is strong enough again,” said Kelly.
There’s no letting up in the streaming wars. Discovery+ launched this month, but the company sees itself as a complementary service to other streamers, not a head-to-head competitor. Not being a first mover isn’t a problem for the company.
“Netflix and Disney are winning globally,” said David Zaslav, president and CEO of Discovery on the CNN Business digital live show Markets Now.
“But 50% of what people watch on TV aren’t the scripted series,” Zaslav said. That’s where Discovery+ comes in, which includes channels like Discovery Channel and Food Network and shows unscripted shows like those on TLC.
“We have the most original content of anybody right now, because we’re able to produce,” he said. “We think it’s the perfect time for Discovery+.”
The insane surges in GameStop (GME) and AMC (AMC) shares have caused at least one top online broker to curtail trading in the two stocks on Wednesday.
TD Ameritrade, owned by Charles Schwab (SCHW), said in a statement that “in the interest of mitigating risk for our company and clients, we have put in place several restrictions on some transactions in Gamestop and AMC and other securities.”
“We made these decisions out of an abundance of caution amid unprecedented market conditions and other factors,” TD Ameritrade added.
GameStop more than doubled Wednesday and has soared nearly 720% in just the past five days. AMC skyrocketed more than 200% Wednesday.
Both stocks have been propelled by individual traders on Reddit’s WSB board as well as customers of popular brokerage firm Robinhood. Each stock has been targeted by short sellers who believe the recent price surges are overdone.
But since short sellers have to borrow stock and sell it – and eventually have to buy back the shares and return them – the bullish comments and buy-by-the-day traders are causing big losses for hedge funds betting against GameStop and AMC. That has driven the stocks even higher, known as a short squeeze.
How about some escapism from this mad day? Let’s talk about tomorrow.
The big economic releases are on deck: weekly jobless claims and the first look at fourth quarter GDP. Both reports are out at 8:30 am ET.
Weekly jobless claims haven’t looked encouraging lately and tomorrow’s report is unlikely to change that. Economists predict another 875,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week. That’s would be a slight decline from the prior week’s 900,000 but still far above the pre-pandemic level. The numbers do not include claims for the pandemic-specific government programs.
Continued jobless claims, which count workers who have applied for benefits at least two weeks in a row, are expected to stay flat at 5.1 million.
Meanwhile, we’ll get the advance read of US gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, for the fourth quarter. Economists predict GDP grew at an annualized rate of 4%.
In a normal year, that would be something to celebrate – an A+ for Trump’s final economic report card. But 2020 was no normal year and the economy remains far from its pre-pandemic glory.
It’s lunchtime in New York but if you’re watching the market you might have lost your appetite as all three major indexes are sharply lower.
The Dow is down 1.5%, or some 450 points, while the broader S&P 500 is down nearly 2%. The Nasdaq Composite is down 1.8%.
A combination of profit-taking following stock rallies, investors awaiting corporate results in the busiest week of earnings season, and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy update this afternoon are all weighing on the market today. Oof.
But there are still some bright – perhaps too bight – spots in the market. GameStop (GME) and AMC (AMC) are still rallying, boosted by prolific Reddit users and retail investors who think Wall Street “experts” have got it all wrong.
GameStop (GME) is undoubtedly the stock of the week. The gaming retailer spiked Monday after retail investors chatting on Reddit talked the company up, forcing a massive squeeze among short sellers.
This week so far, GameStop is up more than 450%. And today alone, shares have risen more than 100%.
Is your head spinning yet?
Well, this momentum might not last, according to analysts at Bank of America (BAC).
GameStop has underperformed for years, they noted, adding that hopes for a turnaround will likely not be enough to really offset the structural pressures the company faces.
The pandemic has forced GameStop to shift more online, where 30% of its sales are now generated – and which GameStop bulls see as a major opportunity. But Bank of America is still skeptical:
Bank of America’s price target for GameStop is $10 … and the company currently trades at more than $370 per share.
For the first time in modern history, ExxonMobil is facing a battle to oust its board of directors.
Engine No. 1, a new activist investment firm, carried through on its threat to nominate four independent director candidates to Exxon’s board. The fact that Exxon (XOM) faces a credible board fight underscores how disillusioned shareholders are about the iconic company’s staggering decline.
Exxon needs a “clean break from a strategy and mindset that have led to years of value destruction and poorly positioned the company for the future,” Activist No. 1 said in a statement.
In a statement, Exxon said it has been in talks with Engine No. 1 since mid-November and the company’s board affairs committee will “evaluate” the investor’s nominees.
Exxon promised to update investors in the coming weeks on its “strategy to build long-term, sustainable value for shareholders.”
The struggling company is discussing adding one or more new directors to its board and stepping up sustainability investments, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.
Engine No. 1 said a “reactive short-term approach is no substitute for a proactive long-term strategy that addresses the threats and opportunities facing the company in a changing world.”
