Investors are celebrating Thanksgiving early this week with the S&P 500 rising more than 1% so far during the short trading week as of mid-afternoon Wednesday.
Markets will reopen on Friday briefly from the usual opening time of 9:30am ET until 1:00pm ET.
Despite a short week there was still a solid amount of earnings reports and economic data released. The biggest headlines of the week were Bob Iger’s surprising return as Disney’s CEO replacing his chosen successor, Bob Chapek. Meanwhile, the European Union discussed a potential price cap on Russian oil between $65 and $70 a barrel.
Corporate Performance
Earnings reports were relatively mixed this week with most of the big names seeing investor positive sentiment on their results. Zoom Video (ZM), Dollar Tree (DLTR), Nordstrom (JWN), and Jacobs Engineering (J) highlighted the losers of the week with Zoom missing on revenue estimates and cutting its full-year guidance and Dollar Tree not surprisingly suffering from tighter margins.
Alternatively, Best Buy (BBY), Dell (DELL), Urban Outfitters (URBN), Deere (DE), Agilent (A), and J.M. Smucker (SJM) were some of the biggest winners. Best Buy shares rose after the retailer stuck to its strong holiday season guidance. Deere meanwhile saw its stock price increase after surpassing estimates with industrial spending boosting results. Lastly, sentiment rose on J.M. Smucker after the firm boosted its full-year outlook with Uncrustables experiencing strong growth and CEO Mark Smucker declaring the the product line will be worth $1 billion over time, who knows how long that will be though.
Economic Data
It was a moderately busy economic-data week with all reports released Wednesday ahead of Thanksgiving. Initial unemployment claims rose more than expected, rising from 223,000 to 240,000 claims with analysts having predicted 226,000 new claims. Continuing claims also increased to 1.551 million from 1.503 million the previous week.
Meanwhile, durable orders rose 1.0% in October, crushing estimates for a 0.4% gain following September’s 0.3% increase. New home sales came in above expectations at an annualized rate of 632,000 new sales following the previous month’s 588,000 which was revised down from 603,000.
Lastly, the Fed minutes later today are expected to show policymakers in support of a higher peak of interest rates than previously signaled. Economic data has remained solid leaving the central bank free to focus on getting inflation under control as fast as it can.
