Pre-market futures are headed mostly lower this morning, with only the blue-chip Dow — the laggard in yesterday’s highly successful trading day — remaining in the green at this hour. Even with the spectre of the U.S. government opening back up this week, November remains a relative roller coaster of trading. The Dow is +24 points, the S&P 500 is -16, the Nasdaq is giving back a portion of its 500+ points gained yesterday, -115, and the small-cap Russell 2000 is -5.
Weekly Private Sector Payroll Average -11K per Week: ADP
While we await the government reopening and all the economic reports to be released in its wake, ADP ADP has followed up its monthly jobs report from last week with a four-week moving average of private-sector payrolls. The -11K headline through the week of October 25 suggests a notable reversal from the +42K reported from mid-last month. This is still a lagging indicator, but will provide data on a weekly basis until the next monthly ADP report due the first week of December.
Small-Business Optimism Falls -0.6% in October
This morning, the NFIB Small Business Optimum Index — a key metric for hiring at companies with fewer than 50 employees, which accounts for the largest number of overall working Americans — fell -0.6% last month, tov a level of 98.2. This is still above the long-term average, though obviously moving in the wrong direction.
Plans to Increase Hiring fell -1 point to +15% last month, while Plans to Invest rose +2 points to +23%. Troubles with Labor Quality reached +9 in this survey, the highest month-over-month hike since the Covid pandemic. Unfilled Job Openings was unchanged at +32% for the month. These figures do not suggest small-business hiring falling off a cliff, but some positive sentiment here would have been welcome.
Earnings Reports Ahead of the Opening Bell
AngloGold Ashanti AU, a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) gold miner, this morning pulled off a rare feat: it missed expectations on both top and bottom lines in its Q3 earnings report, and the stock still added +3% — adding to its +221% gains year to date. Earnings of $1.32 per share missed by a scant 2 cents, while revenues reached $2.42 billion, below the $2.53 billion in the Zacks consensus. Is this a matter of gold investing demonstrating its power as a hedge investment?
AI stock Nebius NBIS shares are also up this morning, even after posting its own Q3 revenue miss: $146.1 million versus expectations of $150.7 million. But prevailing over this quarterly report news is the $3 billion AI computing infrastructure deal struck with Meta META. This follows a $19 billion investment into Nebius from Microsoft MSFT recently.
Beyond Meat BYND shares are down -9% this morning on its mixed Q3 report this morning. Negative earnings of -47 cents per share was 6 cents below the Zacks consensus, while $70.22 million in quarterly revenues improved over expectations by +1.93%. Shares are already down -63% year to date for the specialty goods manufacturer.
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Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) : Free Stock Analysis Report
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Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS) : Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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