Morgans AM: Friday, 21 October 2022

Morgans Financial Limited

US equity markets retreated after another choppy trading session as Treasury yields climbed to their highest levels in more than 14 years - Dow fell -90.22-points or -0.30%, unwinding an earlier rally of almost +400-points. International Business Machines (IBM) Corp rose +4.73% after reporting a stronger-than-expected third quarter result after the close of the previous session. Walmart Inc U.S. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) John Furner said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show that the retail giant “certainly are watching the market very closely, but what we see from customers is that spending is still strong. There’s a lot of demand in the United States and we think that’s going to continue.” Mr Furner declined to predict whether we’d see a recession but said that Walmart was working to “take unnecessary costs out of any part of our business” so that the company “can reflect better retail values for customers.” Walmart is slated to release their quarterly result on 15 November. The broader S&P500 lost -0.80%, with Utilities (down -2.51%) leading eight of the eleven primary sectors lower. Communication Services (up +0.36%), Energy (+0.18%) and Information Technology (+0.07%) all settled with modest gains. Tesla Inc dropped -6.65% after the electric vehicle maker recorded better-than-expected adjusted EPS (US$1.05 versus consensus US$1.00), but revenue (US$21.45B) fell short of forecasts (US$21.98B) despite delivering a record number of cars in the third quarter. The Washington Post reported that CEO Elon Musk intends to slash 75% of Twitter Inc's (up +1.18%) 7,500 workers in the coming months, chopping the company's head count to just over 2,000. Elsewhere, The Oregonian reported that Intel Corp (up +0.31%) is planning on announcing “targeted” layoffs in November. The Nasdaq fell -0.61%. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 lost -1.24%.