Tough Day For Stocks…

Stocks took it on the chin today with most of the major averages closing in the red. On the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (chart) closed down 279.47 points, the Nasdaq (chart) closed lower by 75.97 points, the S&P 500 (chart) closed the day off by 23.81 points and the small-cap Russell 2000 (chart) lost 21.04 points. Fears from Asia to Europe are spilling over in to U.S. Equities. Securities regulators in China are banning certain types of equities financing which will have an effect on margin trading. Furthermore, across the pond in Europe, investors are becoming more worried about Greece and whether or not that country will be able to make payments on debts that are coming due and whether or not Greece will even stay in the eurozone.

Despite today’s selloff, Q1 earnings have not been too shabby so far, especially out of the banking sector. Earlier this week, JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) reported a $5.91 billion dollar profit or $1.45 per share surpassing most analysts expectations and Citigroup (NYSE: C) also exceeded analysts expectations by posting a $1.51 per share in earnings compared to the $1.39 per share the street expected. The stock that caught everyones attention this week was Netflix (NasdaqGS: NFLX). Netflix (chart) reported in their earnings release that almost 5 million subscribers came online compared to the 4 million analysts anticipated. This metric alone gave Netflix’s stock a boost of almost $90 dollar a share yesterday.

Fast forward to next week and we will get earnings results out of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Verizon (NYSE:V), United Technologies Corp (NYSE: UTX), Yahoo (NasdaqGS: YHOO), Boeing (NYSE: BA), eBay (NasdaqGS: EBAY), Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB), Qualcomm (NasdaqGS: QCOM), The Coca-Cola Co (NYSE: KO), Tractor Supply Co. (NasdaqGS: TSCO), 3M Co (NYSE: MMM), Amazon (NasdaqGS: AMZN), Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE: LLY), General Motors (NYSE: GM), Google (NasdaqGS: GOOGL), Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT), Newmont Mining (NYSE: NEM), Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV), Starbucks Corp (NasdaqGS: SBUX) and Biogen (NasdaqGS: BIIB) just to name a few. I think it’s safe to say we will get a very broad look as to how corporate America is faring after all of these earnings results come forward.

Have a great weekend and good luck next week 🙂

~George