Thursday, December 19, 2024
The stock market gave a rebound the old college try today, but aside from a modest +15 points on the blue-chip Dow, indexes closed in the red again today. Results were nowhere near as bad as they were yesterday, but the S&P 500 slipped -5 points (-0.09%), the Nasdaq -19 points (-0.10%) and the small-cap Russell 2000 -10 points (-0.45%).
For the Dow, it breaks a 10-session losing streak off all-time highs at the start of this month, including its worst single-trading day since the dawning of the Covid era. The Dow remains +12% year to date. Overall, we can call today’s trading session “flat.”
Part of the consternation in today’s market came from Washington DC, where fears that the debt ceiling would not get raised ahead of the second term of President-elect Trump, and that Elon Musk — enjoying an unprecedented level of influence over the incoming White House — was in favor of letting the government shutdown rather than pass a major spending bill.
Those concerns are somewhat alleviated at this hour, with President-elect Trump now giving his blessing on raising the debt ceiling for another two years and passing the major spending bill forthcoming. This may not be what deficit hawks wanted to see from Trump, but at least he doesn’t start a new term hamstrung by budgetary questions right out of the gate.
Fiscal Q2 Earnings After the Bell: FedEx, Nike
FedEx FDX shares were up as much as +12% following the release of fiscal Q2 earnings results after today’s closing bell. Earnings of $4.05 per share improved from the $3.90 in the Zacks consensus, and the $3.99 per share reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $22.0 billion were slightly beneath the $22.04 billion analysts were looking for.
But the big news from FedEx was the confirmation of its Less Than Truck Load (LTL) freight business being spun off from FDX, creating a second publicly traded company at some point within the next 18 months. Shares are currently up +8% a half-hour or so following this news.
Nike NKE shares are also up big in after-hours trading, +11%, following big beats on both top and bottom lines for its fiscal Q2 report this afternoon. Earnings of 78 cents per share blew past the 63 cents expected, with revenues of $12.35 billion beyond the $12.10 billion in the Zacks consensus. This brings Nike’s string of earnings beats to six-straight quarters. This is also the firstearnings callwith recently hired CEO Elliott Hill, who took over back in mid-October.
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