Market indices were lower again today (following Friday of last week’s modest drop), although we continue to see relative strength in A.I.-oriented chipmakers like AMD AMD and NVIDIA NVDA, which were up +8.3% and +3%, respectively. The energy space was by far the worst performer on the session. In total, the Dow slipped -231 points, -0.62%, while the S&P 500 was -0.37%. The Nasdaq outperformed the field but still came in -0.19%, while the small-cap Russell 2000 bottomed out again, -1.26% for the day.
For the Nasdaq, we’ve just seen a six-day winning streak broken, while the Dow has submitted its worst trading day since December 20th. We’ve also seen the 10-year bond yields creep back above 4% to 4.06%, up from the post-Christmas near-term lows of 3.79%. That said, we’re now at the tightest levels of the 10-year bond yield curve inversion with 2-years in quite some time: the 2-year registered 4.22%, making the inversion between the two down to 0.16%.
Interactive Brokers IBKR reported Q4 earnings after today’s closing bell, notching a mixed overall report. Earnings of $1.52 per share came in 2 cents shy of the Zacks consensus, while revenues in the quarter of $1.15 billion slightly outpaced the $1.12 billion analysts were looking for. Customer accounts grew +23% in the quarter while Net Interest Income rose +29%. There is no guidance in the release, though shares are dropping -3% in late trading on the news, giving back a sizable portion of the +7.5% gains the company has made over the past month.
The first big tech buyout was announced this morning, with electronic design automation producer Synopsys SNPS offering $35 billion in cash and stock for ANSYS ANSS, an engineering simulation software firm with inroads to the automotive and aerospace/defense spaces, among others. Each ANSYS shareholder would receive $197 in cash and roughly one-third of a share of SNPS stock per share of ANSS, pending regulatory approval. The merger would create a new major player in the automation engineering software space.
Tomorrow brings us a plethora of economic data, including Retail Sales, Import Prices and Industrial Production/Capacity Utilization numbers for December, Business Inventories for November and Homebuilders’ Confidence for January. As far as quarterly earnings reports, Chas Schwab SCHW, Prologis PLD and former earnings-season kicker-offer Alcoa AA will bring fresh results for Q4 tomorrow.
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