Medicare Agent News: K-Pop Stock Pops

Thursday, October 15, 2020

K-Pop Stock Pops

By Nicholas Jasinski | Thursday, October 15

Lack of Momentum. Stocks slumped at the open today, before paring their losses in afternoon trading to close just below the break-even line. It was the third-straight day of losses for the major U.S. indexes.

After a couple of strong weeks for stocks, there just hasn’t been much buying appetite among investors in recent sessions, and a near-flat finish was major indexes’ best day since Monday.

Spirits were dampened by fading hopes for a pre-election U.S. stimulus deal and tightening government restrictions in Europe as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Third-quarter earnings season continued, with results from companies including Morgan Stanley and Walgreens Boots Alliance. And the coming U.S. election looms large, with less than three weeks to go.

Uncertainty on those fronts makes a wait-and-see approach seem most attractive for many these days.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down less than 0.1%, the S&P 500 fell less than 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.5%.

On the earnings front today, Morgan Stanley continued the recent trend of strong results from Wall Street-oriented banks, with stellar performance from its trading and investment banking divisions in the third quarter. Earnings per share came in 25% higher than a year earlier and handily beat analyst consensus estimates. But, as with other banks that have reported this week, the result didn’t excite investors much. Shares closed up just 1.3%.

Carleton English has more on the report here.

Investors reacted more favorably to Walgreens Boots Alliance's third-quarter report, although earnings fell by almost half versus the year-earlier period. Teresa Rivas explained why:

While the pandemic may seem like good news for drugstores and other health-care stocks, that hasn’t been the case. For Walgreens, a rise in mail-order prescriptions as people remain at home means fewer customers browsing its stores while they wait to pick up their medicine. A reduction in travel also means fewer customers at airports and train stations.

Also hurting Walgreen's results was poor performance at Boots, its U.K. business. But the stock had slumped going into the report, and expectations weren't particularly high. Investors boosted Walgreens shares by 4.8% today.

On deck to report tomorrow are Bank of New York Mellon, Kansas City Southern, Schlumberger, State Street, and more.