A roundup of Wednesday’s stock market results from across the Americas
🌎 Latin American markets fall:
Latin American markets closed lower on Wednesday, with Argentina’s Merval (MERVAL) breaking its five-day upward streak to close 3.13% lower, dragged down by the shares of Banco Macro (BMA), Telecom Argentina (TECO2) y Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGSU2).
The 7.7% monthly inflationary peak at the end of the first quarter of this year proved explosive for Argentina’s delicate foreign exchange market. The blue dollar, which is traded in the informal market, rose more than 5% in the last three days to 422 pesos to the US dollar on Wednesday.
But the tools seem to have been exhausted. And it is not just a market sentiment. A part of the Central Bank’s board believes that a rate move is no longer enough and would become completely useless in this context, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
🗽On Wall Street:
Stocks were little changed at closing Wednesday as traders assessed another batch of corporate earnings and remained focused on any signals about the Federal Reserve’s next policy moves. Bond yields climbed.
The S&P 500 halted a two-day advance. The Cboe Volatility Index hit its lowest since November 2021, declining to around 16. In late trading, Tesla Inc. dropped as its first-quarter profit missed expectations. International Business Machines Corp. rose after reporting better-than-estimated earnings, while giving a forecast for annual revenue that was in line with projections.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.01%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.23%, while the Nasdaq Composite (CCMPDL) gained 0.03%.
Morgan Stanley rose after its investment bank and giant wealth unit surpassed expectations even as profits fell. Western Alliance Bancorp climbed after beating earnings estimates and saying deposits recovered.
The US economy stalled in recent weeks, with hiring and inflation slowing and access to credit narrowing, the Fed said in its Beige Book survey. That’s a step down from the tone of the previous report — published in early March just before Silicon Valley Bank’s failure — which showed an economy that remained resilient though with growing doubts about the rest of the year.
“Portfolio managers are trying to reduce risk because of concerns that nothing good can happen after so much central bank tightening,” said Andrew Pease, head of investment strategy at Russell investments Ltd. On earnings, “companies are losing pricing power and a margin squeeze is happening in the background and that’s what to look for when the dust settles on quarter one.”
Treasury two-year rates, which are more sensitive to imminent policy moves, topped 4.2%. The dollar rose. Bitcoin dropped below $30,000. Oil fell while gold declined below $2,000 an ounce.
Las bolsas de Estados Unidos cerraron mixtas este miércoles tras una jornada bursátil con pocos cambios y marcada por la cautela ante los resultados de los bancos más grandes del país. Los inversionistas siguen enfocados en las señales que apuntan a cuáles serán los próximos movimientos de la Reserva Federal.
Hoy Morgan Stanley subió luego de que su banco de inversión y su unidad de riqueza superaron las expectativas, incluso cuando sus ganancias cayeron. Mientras que Western Alliance Bancorp también subió después de superar las estimaciones de ganancias y tras mencionar que los depósitos se recuperaron.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.2%, the euro fell 0.2% to $1.0955, the British pound rose 0.1% to $1.2439 and the Japanese yen fell 0.5% to 134.80 per dollar.
🍝 For the dinner table debate:
Meta Platforms Inc. (META) reported that it is set to begin company-wide layoffs this Wednesday in a restructuring of teams aimed at achieving the operational efficiencies desired by founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook’s parent company notified managers to prepare to announce job cuts today, via a memo seen by Bloomberg News. It said Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Reality Labs - which houses the firm’s virtual reality efforts and Quest hardware - will be affected.
The move is part of a cost-cutting plan that will end 10,000 jobs at the company, as announced by Zuckerberg in March. Another round of cuts will take place in May.
Meta already cut about 13% of its workforce, or about 11,000 jobs, in November. It also extended a hiring freeze through the first quarter, which has been punctuated by job and cost cuts at other Silicon Valley companies.
Leidys Becerra, a content producer at Bloomberg Línea, and Sujata Rao of Bloomberg News, contributed to this report.