"Dog Days" of August Settle into the Market
Aside from Monday’s heroic turnaround on the Dow and S&P 500, this has been a fairly bad week for market indexes. Though the Dow only dipped -0.19% on the day, it marks the third-straight down day and -700+ points since Monday’s close. The S&P 500 managed to eke out a +0.13% beat on the day but is still down -1.68% from Monday.
The Nasdaq also scraped out a +0.11% beat on the day, but is on pace to post its worst trading week since May. The small-cap Russell 2000, as it has grown accustomed lately, put up the worst numbers today among major indexes, -1.22%. For the past week and a half, the Russell’s chart has gone straight down, and is now -9.7% off its all-time high registered on March 15th of this year.
We know late August is the heart of the summer doldrums — the “Dog Days,” if you will — and as such is a seasonally difficult period for even the best of markets. Fairly low trading volume at this time of year makes it harder to trade out of holes. Also consider the market is still up around 100% from its pandemic lows, and even +30% from its pre-Covid highs posted back in February of 2020.
Oil prices are now down for six straight days, with the WTI registering its lowest price-per-barrel since May. A stronger U.S. and output raises from OPEC and the U.S. have helped contribute. And, of course, we mustn’t forget the dreaded Delta variant — which has generated a legitimate fourth wave of Covid-19 in certain regions of the U.S., and which hits economies hard as it forces people inside their homes once again.
Applied Materials AMAT put up strong fiscal Q3 earnings numbers after Thursday’s closing bell: $1.90 per share versus $1.76 expected, on $6.2 billion in sales which grew 41% year over year and beat the Zacks consensus $5.92 billion. Semiconductor Systems brought $4.45 billion in the quarter and Applied Global Services had $1.29 billion. Guidance for fiscal Q4 was raised considerably from current estimates.
Ross Stores ROST also easily outpaced estimates in its Q2 report this afternoon, with $1.39 per share far outperforming the $1.00 estimate (not to mention the -13 cents per share reported in the year-ago quarter). Revenues of $4.8 billion surpassed the $4.56 billion in the Zacks consensus. However, guidance for next quarter and for the full year are well short of expectations; the company cited the end of things like stimulus checks in the second half of the year. Shares are -3.5% in late trading.
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