Medicare Agent News: Earnings Ahead

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Earnings Ahead

By Nicholas Jasinski | Wednesday, March 29

Collective Rally. Stocks bounced today thanks to a confluence of positive individual factors, rather than one overarching macro theme. A stock index is an index of stocks, after all.

Following yesterday's better-than-expected consumer confidence reading, Lululemon Athletica added to the optimism about the resilience of the American shopper with its latest earnings report.

The athleisure giant handily beat estimates for sales and earnings in its all-important holiday fiscal quarter, and added upbeat guidance for the year ahead. Lululemon stock finished the day up 12.7%. Shares of retailers and consumer-focused companies rose in near-unison.

As for the beleaguered banking sector, news from Europe buoyed the group today. UBS said that it will bring back Sergio Ermotti to serve as CEO and oversee the Swiss bank’s acquisition of rival Credit Suisse. Ermotti had previously helmed UBS for nine years, until 2020.

UBS stock ended the day up 4.3%. The SPDR S&P Bank exchange-traded fund (KBE) rose 1.5%, led by the likes of First Republic Bank, whose stock gained 5.6%.

Then there was Micron Technologies, whose stock surged 7.2% today following its quarterly report. The memory-chip maker had a brutal three months, with sales down by 53% and a wider-than-expected loss. But it's the outlook that matters.

Micron management said that it see signs of improvement in customers' inventory levels, suggesting that the semiconductor industry could be headed out of its post-pandemic downturn.

That was all the encouragement chip investors needed. Besides Micron, the news sent Nvidia stock up 2.2%, Intel up 7.6% (also helped by a chip-release announcement), and Qualcomm up 3.1%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) added 3.2%. The gains helped to lift the S&P 500 technology stocks 2.1% on the day.

Put it all together, and a broad rally was the result. All 11 S&P 500 sectors finished the day in the green, as the index rose 1.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1% while the Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.8%.