While you were sleeping: Bulls still in charge

Tuesday 5th May 2015

Wall Street moved higher amid further evidence that US corporate earnings are in better shape than feared.

Shares of Berkshire Hathaway rose, last up 2 percent, after the company reported better than expected earnings after the market closed on Friday. Shares of Comcast also gained, last up 0.8 percent, after it posted earnings that surpassed expectations.

Despite a weakening in the pace of US economic growth, corporate earnings have not been as dire as some had anticipated. Of the S&P 500 members that have already released results this season, 73 percent exceeded profit forecasts and 49 percent surpassed sales estimates, according to Bloomberg.

“We still have a pretty heavy slate of earnings this entire week, with a number of high profile companies reporting, that’ll probably be the focus for the next several days,” Michael James, a Los Angeles based managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities, told Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, investors are also eyeing US jobs data scheduled for release later this week. The focus is on Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report which is expected to show US companies added 225,000 jobs in April, pushing the unemployment rate to 5.4 percent.

On Monday, a report showed that US factory orders rose 2.1 percent in March, the largest increase since July last year, and following a 0.1 percent decline in February.

In late afternoon trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.39 percent, he Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.38 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.39 percent.

Gains in shares of JPMorgan Chase and those of Merck last up 1.7 percent and 1.6 percent respectively, led the Dow higher.

Shares of Cisco advanced, last up 0.5 percent, after the company said Chief Executive John Chambers will step down in July after 20 years in the role, and that Chuck Robbins will succeed him. Chambers will become Cisco’s executive chairman.

"In many cases where the CEO has been very acquisitive, the next guy pares down and refocuses the company, and that is what I would be expecting with this change," Kim Forrest, an analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, told Reuters.

In another era ending cautionary note, Bill Gross said that the so called great Bull Run, which started in 1981, for stocks and bonds might be coming to an end.

“Credit based oxygen is running out,” Gross said in an outlook titled “A sense of an ending” on the Janus Capital Group website. “As it is, in 2015, I merely have a sense of an ending, a secular bull market ending with a whimper, not a bang.”

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the day with a 0.6 percent gain from the previous close. France’s CAC 40 Index advanced 0.7 percent, while Germany’s DAX climbed 1.4 percent. UK markets were closed on Monday for a public holiday.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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