Market indices closed in the red to start this holiday-shortened week, following the first up-week in the past 8 for the Dow, 7 for the Nasdaq and S&P 500. It’s the last trading day in this turbulent month of May, and actually, both the Dow and S&P have managed to come out slightly positive; the Nasdaq is still down.
That said, the Dow is notably off its intra-day lows by the closing bell — the blue-chip index had been -461 points as it fell off a table to start regular trading — to close -222 points, -0.67%. The S&P dropped -0.62% on the day, with the Nasdaq -0.41%. Worst of all in the regular session was the small-cap Russell 2000, -1.26% from Friday’s close.
After we got a higher-than-expected
Case-Shiller Home Price Index
for March this morning, another home price report from the
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)
, which came in a little light of expectations: 19.0% versus 19.4% expected. For Case-Shiller, the top performing cities were Tampa, Phoenix and Miami, but for the FHFA, top states for home pricing in March were Arizona, Utah and Idaho.
Consumer Confidence
for May fell only slightly month over month, improving over expectations of 103.9 to 106.4 last month; April’s headline was 108.6. For
Chicago PMI
, another economic release from earlier today, the May headline swung to month over month growth from a pullback expected: 60.3 outpaced the 56.4 we saw for April and expectations of 55.9.
After Tuesday’s close,
salesforce.com
CRM
posted another earnings beat for its fiscal Q1 (ended April) — the company has not missed on the bottom line since Zacks reconfigured how it counts earnings results five years ago. Revenues of $7.41 billion outperformed the $7.37 billion in the Zacks consensus. Shares are lifted on these numbers in late trading, by now more than +6% after hours.
Although forward guidance appears mixed, expectations on the Street were that perhaps enterprise software forays might have been worse. IT looks reasonably stable from here, and salesforce’s relative resiliency may portend well for the overall space going forward. The company revolutionized sales-force automation software more than 20 years ago.
Manufacturing numbers from PMI and ISM tomorrow lead data points we expect to start the month of June. Now nearly half-way through 2022, the Nasdaq is still in bear-market territory, -23% year to date, while the Dow is -9% and the S&P -13%. Some further improvements for June might be the catalyst market participants are looking for to bring stocks back into the green and stay there.
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