Here are one of the most essential story that financiers require to begin their trading day:
1. April showers
Stocks rolled on Tuesday to liquidate a shedding month for all 3 significant indexes. The S&P 500 fell 1.57% on the day while the Nasdaq Composite and Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 2.04% and 1.49%, respectively. The Dow lost 5% in April, its worst monthly performance since September 2022. The S&P 500 shed about 4.2% for the month and the Nasdaq lost 4.4%. Despite ending a five-month winning streak, the S&P 500 is up more than 20% from its low in October. Follow live market updates.
2. Amazing growth
Pascal Rossignol | Reuters
Amazon shares are up about 2% in the premarket after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the quarter on Tuesday. Operating income soared to $15.3 billion, up more than 200% compared with a year ago. Net income also more than tripled to $10.4 billion. Advertising revenue accelerated 24% for the quarter, outpacing retail and cloud computing. Sales at Amazon Web Services grew 17%, topping estimates. The earnings growth comes after the company initiated widespread cost-cutting, tweaked its fulfillment operations and stabilized cloud spending.
3. Holding pattern
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy in Washington, U.S., March 20, 2024.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
4. Missing targets
Starbucks Coffee shop in Krakow, Poland on February 29, 2024.Ă‚Â
Beata Zawrzel | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Shares of Starbucks are down about 12% in the premarket on weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue. Same-store sales declined 4% and traffic to its cafes fell 6% in the quarter. Same-store sales plunged 11% in China, the coffee chain’s second-largest market. “In a highly challenged environment, this quarter’s results do not reflect the power of our brand, our capabilities or the opportunities ahead,” CEO Laxman Narasimhan said in a statement Tuesday. Starbucks also predicted its cafes would keep underperforming and slashed its fiscal 2024 earnings and revenue forecast.
5. Settling
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday it will pay $6.5 billion to settle almost all of the lawsuits claiming its talc-based products caused ovarian cancer. Under the deal, J&J will resolve the thousands of lawsuits through a third bankruptcy filing of a subsidiary company. The news begins a three-month voting period for claimants to reach a consensus. The remaining pending litigation relates to a rare cancer called mesothelioma and will be addressed separately.
— CNBC’s Brian Evans, Sarah Min, Annie Palmer, Jeff Cox, Amelia Lucas and Annika Kim Constantino contributed to this report.
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