Markets Set New Record Closes; FedEx Beats on Q2 (revised)
After less-than-stellar economic data from Jobless Claims and Retail Sales this week — not to mention still no agreement on a $900 billion stimulus bill from Congress — major market indexes all closed at fresh all-time highs. It’s the S&P’s 31st all-time closing high this year, and Nasdaq is on pace for its strongest full-year performance since 2009. The small-cap Russell 2000 continued to outpace its larger brethren, gaining 1.3% on the day.
We also await a vote on Moderna’s MRNA Covid-19 vaccine, which has been submitted for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Some had expected the EUA to have been granted already, mired as the country is in some of the worst daily Covid infection numbers we have yet seen. In fact, yesterday’s nearly 231K new cases was the second-highest daily total ever, jest after nearly 235K cases reported one day last week. In short, we’re far from out of the woods on the coronavirus front.
Moderna’s vaccine approval would come as a welcome development, as the Pfizer PFE-BioNTech BNTX drug is in full distribution, up to reportedly 50 million doses. This is terrific, though the U.S. currently has over 330 million people. Both vaccines were developed along similar lines, employing mRNA technology, which allows bodies to build protective proteins within their systems. And this technology looks to have set the pace for new immunization treatments, as they have already pulled ahead of the Covid-19 vaccine development pack.
Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock with a Value-Growth-Mometum score of A, FedEx FDX reported solid beats for its fiscal Q2 earnings results Thursday afternoon, with $4.83 per share easily outpacing the $3.90 Zacks consensus estimate. Revenues of $20.6 billion zoomed past the $19.3 billion our analysts were expecting, on 19% growth year over year. This marks the company’s third straight quarterly outperformance.
However, shares are trading down 3.5% on the news, perhaps because the company did not provide forward guidance. If this is truly the reason, then things have changed from a quarter or two ago, when no forward guidance on earnings reports was very common. More likely this is a “sell the news” situation, as FedEx shares are trading +223% from its March lows. For more on FDX’s earnings, click here.
(NOTE: We are reissuing this article to correct a mistake. The original version, published earlier today, Thursday, December 17, 2020, should no longer be relied upon.)
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