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Happy Friday, Bull Sheeters. Global stocks and U.S. futures are showing some signs of life, with tech shares rebounding after a rough week.
In fact, stock futures are climbing even as Treasury yields continue to surge. Oh, and Bitcoin, too, just hit a fresh all-time high.
Below, we have an update on what’s been a blockbuster earnings season.
But first, let’s see where investors are putting their money.
Markets update
Asia
- The major Asia indexes are mixed, with the Hang Seng up nearly 0.2%.
- Cheap credit is a thing everywhere, apparently. Tencent Holdings raised $8.3 billion via an offshore syndicated loan, the biggest lending arrangement of its kind in the past five years, as Chinese tech companies continue to hit the debt market.
- Your children and grandchildren won’t like to hear this: global debt, as measured by a percentage of GDP, has hit an eye-watering 356%.
Europe
- The European bourses were as flat as a slice of prosciutto, before climbing. The Stoxx Europe 600 was 0.3% higher two hours into the trading session.
- Shares in Nestlé were up 0.5% in early morning trade after the world’s largest food company reported mixed results on Thursday with pet food booming, and its chocolate and bottled water businesses sagging.
- European stocks may have had a lousy showing on Thursday, but analysts are still bullish, predicting a “roaring twenties” rally through year-end.
U.S.
- The U.S. futures have been gaining all morning. That’s after the S&P 500 fell for a third straight session on Thursday, the longest losing streak of 2021. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, has been in the red all week.
- According to the Wall Street Journal, IBM is mulling the sale of its loss-making Watson Health unit, or, having it merge with a SPAC. The tech giant is falling behind rivals in the cloud wars, and so a major streamlining effort is said to be in the works. The share price is down 4.1% YTD.
- When it comes to stimulus, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in the go-big-or-go-home camp. She told CNBC yesterday, “We think it’s very important to have a big package.” U.S. futures initially sank on her comments, before recovering somewhat.
Elsewhere
- Gold is down again, trading around $1,770. The precious metal seems anything but—it’s on pace to have its worst performance in 30 years.
- The dollar is down.
- Crude is lower, with Brent trading just above $63/barrel.
- At 11 a.m. Rome time, Bitcoin was up 2% at $52,700, a new all-time high.
***
By the numbers
160.41
The losing streak on the tech-heavy Nasdaq has now reached four straight sessions. Is this a sign of things to come for 2021? Not necessarily. While the rally has stalled, the Nasdaq is off just 160 points, or 1%, over the past five trading sessions. The bulls would point out that tech stocks are still up 7.6% YTD, outperforming all major U.S. exchanges not named the Russell 2000. The bears might point out that we’re at the end of the earnings cycle, and so there’s less likely to be further share-price catalysts coming from the companies themselves.
$42.51
Speaking of earnings… We have a Q4 report card this morning, courtesy of BofA. With roughly 85% of S&P 500 companies already having reported results, beats, we see, are solidly on the menu. Despite lackluster economic growth, companies are growing again. “4Q EPS is coming in at $42.51, 15% above consensus and 12% better than we expected,” BofA writes. “Other surprises: margins were much better than expected, and corporate sentiment is back to pre-COVID levels.” The beats go well beyond tech and healthcare, with seven of the 11 S&P sectors surprising to the upside. The big winners include financials, consumer discretionary, and communication services, all beating by more than 25%. Now here’s the bad news. Despite the phenomenal quarter, the benchmark S&P is up a mere 4.2% YTD. Tough crowd.
861,000
Yikes! Yesterday’s jobless claims were one big fat miss. Economists had been predicting that 773,000 Americans would have filed for unemployment benefits in the past week. Instead, the initial claims number came in at 861K. The stock market is beginning to pay closer attention to the labor market as chronic weakness in the latter will influence U.S. fiscal policy. If millions of American families continue to struggle, the argument for a giant stimulus package grows. And that has had the effect of pushing up Treasury yields and inflation expectations. We covered what this domino-effect could mean for your portfolio in this space earlier in the week.
***
Have a nice weekend, everyone. I’ll see you back here on Monday… But first, there’s more news below.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
What they're touting on Reddit. Kudos to the WSJ. They crunched a lot of social media data to answer that burning investor question: how do Redditors find the next GameStop to tout? It's a fascinating read.
Turnaround. I've been struck by the rapid rebound in auto stocks in recent months. Investor enthusiasm behind the giants of Detroit and Germany makes automotive a sector to watch in 2021. And, on cue, Daimler yesterday reported results that show it's not only surviving the pandemic, but is plotting serious growth in the years to come.
The Buffett Indicator. What's that? It's a measure of stock market value as defined by the total market capitalization of all U.S. equities compares with GDP. And by that indicator, stocks are not just overvalued, they're wildly out of whack, reports Fortune's Shawn Tully.
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Market candy
Quote of the day
I am not a cat.
That, of course, was Keith "Roaring Kitty" Gill, one of the Reddit ringleaders behind last month's GameStop rally, in his testimony yesterday to the House Financial Services Committee. My colleague Anne Sraders reports that that "cat" line has a double-meaning, which sent the Twitterverse into hysterics.
