Although at on point it looked like Friday's slightly better than expected US GDP reading would ease Wall Street's losses, a tech-slide – driven by Thursday night's disappointing earnings from Alphabet and Amazon – ensured that Wall Street's woes extended into another session. By the end of trading, the Dow Jones Industrials was down by 1.19% or 296.24 points to 24,688.31, while the S&P 500 had fallen 1.73% or 46.88 points to 2,658.69 and the Nasdaq Composite was off by 2.06% at 7,167.21. In parallel, the yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note was down by four basis points to 3.08%. For the week as a whole, investors in the S&P 500 were left nursing a loss of 3.94%. Brent also finished the week sharply lower, losing 2.9% to finish at $77.45 a barrel by the end of the trading day in London, although it was 0.142% higher for the day. Losses for crude oil materialised as several well-known equity strategists cautioned clients that another leg lower for US stocks might lay ahead as the Federal Reserve continued to tighten policy. Nevertheless, in the case of Brent, several top-ranked analysts, including Sova Capital's Head of Quantitative Investment Strategies Group, Konstantin Brownstein, believed that it might yet set fresh highs over the course of the first half of 2019. SpreadEx analyst Connor Campbell, said: "Dropping 400 points, the Dow Jones found itself dipping under 24,600, in doing so striking a fresh 3 and a half month low. In the end, the fact the US Q3 GDP number came in at 3.5% against the 3.3% expected meant little to investors, especially since that beat still sees growth down from Q2's 4.2%." Earnings from tech giants Amazon and Alphabet were the main focus of the session. Although Amazon topped analysts' earnings per share forecast for the third quarter, it fell short on revenues and guidance, while Google parent Alphabet surpassed quarterly earnings per share estimates but missed those for revenues. Amazon's shares fell 7.82%, while those of Alphabet ended the session 2.20% lower, having managed to claw back much larger earlier losses. Oanda analyst Craig Erlam said: "Risk aversion is alive and kicking on Friday, as weaker than expected tech earnings trigger the latest stampede and those still buying the dips once again get burned. "Tech companies have raised the bar so high in recent years that the numbers reported by Amazon and Alphabet just weren't quite spectacular enough, not at a time when investors are a nervous wreck and fleeing for safety at the first sign of danger." Elsewhere on the corporate front, Snapchat parent Snap Inc tumbled 11.59% at the opening bell after it said late on Thursday that users dropped more than analysts had expected in the third quarter, with daily active users set to fall again next quarter. Shares in Colgate-Palmolive were 4.87% in the red after the release of its third-quarter numbers. On the data front, America's economy slowed a tad less than expected in the third quarter, but investment was weak, according to some economists. According to a preliminary estimate from the Department of Commerce, US gross domestic product expanded at a quarterly annualised pace of 3.5% over the three months to September, down from a clip of 4.2% over the previous three months. Economists had pencilled-in growth of 3.3%. The government said a reduction in export sales, together with increased purchases of goods and services from abroad, and a deceleration in non-residential fixed investment were the main drags on levels of activity, partly offset by a faster pace of inventory builds. Non-residential fixed investment meanwhile, which includes outlays on equipment, structures and intellectual property, added just 0.12 points to GDP, down from 1.1% points over the three months to June. On that note, Pooja Sriram at Barclays Research said: "The weak spot in today’s report was business fixed investment, with structures, equipment and residential investment all slowing considerably in Q3. This suggests that the corporate tax cuts have not induced much capital accumulation." Elsewhere, US consumer sentiment unexpectedly deteriorated a little in October, according to a final reading from the University of Michigan. The consumer sentiment index fell to 98.6 this month from 100.1 in September and 100.7 in October 2017. It was also down from the preliminary reading of 99.0. Meanwhile, the index of current economic conditions declined to 113.1 in October from 115.2 last month and 116.5 in October of last year. The index of consumer expectations nudged down to 89.3 from 90.5 last month and last October. |
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