Stocks were mixed in the lead-up to this afternoon’s policy announcement from the Fed as investors mulled over several earnings and economic reports. But the main indexes made a beeline higher after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he doesn’t expect any additional rate hikes.
The earnings calendar was jam-packed with a number of high-profile companies, including e-commerce giant Amazon.com (AMZN). The company’s first-quarter results did not disappoint, with AMZN reporting higher-than-expected earnings and revenue thanks to 17% sales growth in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud segment.
The Dow Jones stock jumped 2.2% today in reaction to earnings, adding $33 billion in market value along the way.
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Pinterest (PINS) was another post-earnings gainer, jumping 21.0% after the social media platform reported a first-quarter beat and gave upbeat second-quarter guidance. The positive earnings reaction for PINS had a halo effect on fellow communication services stocks Meta Platforms (META, +2.1%) and Snap (SNAP, +5.4%).
Starbucks has its worst day in four years after earnings
On the other side of the ledger, there were a number of notable earnings losers today, too. Coffee chain Starbucks (SBUX), for one, plunged 15.9% on a massive earnings miss. The company also lowered its full-year forecast amid a “highly challenged environment.” This marked the worst day for SBUX since March 16, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Jefferies analyst Andy Barish (Hold) says the question investors face is whether Starbucks’ “challenges are more transitory or longer-term issues, i.e. brand, relevance, and competitiveness, especially in China.”
Elsewhere, CVS Health (CVS) tumbled 16.8% after its Q1 earnings were hit by rising Medicare Advantage costs.
Jobs data hits ahead of Fed announcement
Wednesday’s economic calendar was busy, too, with investors particularly focused on a pair of labor market updates. Ahead of the bell, ADP said the U.S. added 192,000 private payrolls in April, more than the 183,000 economists anticipated.
Separate data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed job openings fell to a three-year low in March.
Powell says more rate hikes are “unlikely”
But the big event today was the Fed meeting, where the central bank kept the federal funds rate at a 23-year high amid a “lack of future progress” on lowering inflation to its 2% target. The central bank also said that it would reduce the dollar amount of maturing bonds being removed from its balance sheet to $25 billion from $60 billion.
“That move is probably a prerequisite before any actual cut in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate, but it doesn’t mean a rate cut is likely anytime soon,” said David Payne, economist at The Kiplinger Letter, in Kiplinger’s live Fed blog.
Stocks remained relatively unmoved by the Fed’s policy statement but shot higher after Powell put the kibosh on more rate hikes.
Evidence does show that interest rates are likely at a sufficiently restrictive level, Powell said during his presser, pointing to the results of today’s job openings data as evidence that a tight labor market could be easing. The Fed chief added that it’s “unlikely that the next policy rate move will be a hike.”
Powell’s relatively dovish take on interest rates sent all three indexes up roughly 1%, but the enthusiasm didn’t last long. At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2% at 37,903, while the S&P 500 (-0.3% at 5,018) and the Nasdaq Composite (-0.3% at 15,605) were both in the red.
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