All traders can say is “wow” in regards to U.S. equities. Even with the coronavirus continuing its spread, bulls continue to bid the market higher. While we saw modest gains in the stock market today, with the S&P 500 rising “just” 0.32%, the gains over the past few sessions have been very impressive.
With all three indices hitting new highs this week, it’s got many wondering what’s next. Do we correct lower again or continue to plow onward and upward?
Perhaps the non-farm payrolls report on Friday morning will give us a clue on the next direction. The jobs outlook will help give a better feel on the employment situation, although keep in mind it is a backwards-looking economic reading (as are all of them).
Movers in the Stock Market Today
Taking advantage of a hot market? Elon Musk’s Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock has been soaring and now he’s looking for SpaceX to do the same thing. The company is planning to spin off its satellite-based broadband business, known as Starlink. SpaceX also has a rocket business.
Given how well the stock market has done, it makes sense to come public. Especially with Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) boasting large gains lately.
Boeing (NYSE:BA) was a wild mover in the stock market. First, shares ripped higher on news that the Federal Aviation Administration may reinstate the 737 Max sooner than anticipated — potentially in the next few weeks. Minutes later, shares were fading off the highs on reports that a new software issue had been discovered for the jet. For now, investors are overlooking the latter, with BA shares up about 3.6% to new 2020 highs.
Invitae (NYSE:NVTA) stock caught investors off-guard, ripping about 20% at one point Thursday. The mid-day spike came on reports that the Motley Fool recommended the stock as a buy. To be fair, the technicals have been lining up better lately, but this news was certainly a spark.
Pricing the Casper Sleep (NYSE:CSPR) IPO was no easy task. While the stock rallied about 30% at one point and closed higher by 11.9%, the pricing of the direct listing was prone to a big fluctuation. On Thursday Feb. 5, Casper slashed its IPO range of $17 to $19 down to $12 to $13. It ended up pricing at the former, although buyers stepped in since it’s gone public, pushing shares up to $13.43 by the close.
The coronavirus is hitting the economy and production plans throughout China. The latest victim may be Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) AirPod production. Apple originally wanted 45 million AirPods for the first half of 2020, although component suppliers may have trouble making up that figure even once everything gets back online.
Earnings Movers
Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) fell as much as 5% in early Thursday trading. That’s despite the company beating on earnings and revenue expectations and providing better-than-expected guidance for next quarter. What gives? The company was more cautious surrounding the coronavirus and that had some investors hitting the sell button Thursday morning.
Let’s see if QCOM can erase those post-earnings losses completely or if it will lead to a mild pullback in the ensuing weeks.
Like Qualcomm, Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) also beat on earnings and revenue expectations. However, guidance was disappointing. While management’s forecast called for better-than-expected revenue growth for the upcoming quarter and full year, their earnings forecast came up short on both time frames. Wall Street was expecting both readings to show a small profit. Instead, TWLO is sacrificing profit in lieu of more growth, as it expects a small loss.
While not necessarily a bad business decision, it is weighing on the stock Thursday. Shares finished lower by roughly 7%.
Finally, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) erupted 15% on Thursday, despite earnings of 25 cents per share missing expectations by 2 cents. Revenue of $1.01 billion did beat expectations by $15.1 million though, after growing 11% year-over-year.
However, what really sparked the stock was user growth. Twitter added 7 million daily active users, well ahead of estimates near 2 million. This means that at the end of 2019 Twitter had 152 million daily users. TWTR also made our list of top stock trades from Thursday.
Bret Kenwell is the manager and author of Future Blue Chips and is on Twitter @BretKenwell. As of this writing, Bret Kenwell is long TWLO, NVTA and AAPL.