S&P 500 (VOO) Live: Alphabet Up, Market Down But Improving Already

And we’re off! The stock market opened for trading a bit lower today than it left off last night. But within five minutes of opening, the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) was already, if only barely, in the green with an 0.06% gain. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: VOO), which closely tracks the performance of the index, is up 0.09%.

It’s still a hesitant start, but a logical result in light of comments from President Trump, just published by Time magazine, to the effect that the President is looking to end his trade war with China (and the world) perhaps “a year from now” and with tariffs on foreign countries settling at “20% to 50%.”  

The prospect of trade war volatility dragging on for another 12 months, and of tariffs ending up two to five times higher than the 10% “reciprocal” tariffs already announced, is clearly not something that investors wanted to hear. 

Earnings

Last night, after the close of trading on a third straight day of gains for “the Voo,” index component Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) (Nasdaq: GOOGL) reported earnings a staggering 40% better than Wall Street analysts were predicting, which seemed propitious enough news to keep the stock market rally going this morning. Unfortunately, comments from Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) seem to have canceled out Alphabet’s good news. The chipmaker reported a $0.19 per share loss for its own first quarter, warned that it’s not going to earn a profit in Q2 either (at best, Intel might break even), and its Q2 sales will be about $1 billion less than analysts had forecast.

This mixed messaging on the earnings front, for two of the country’s biggest tech companies, is also weighing on the market today.

Analyst Calls

Perhaps unlucky for them, Wall Street analysts seem not to have had an opportunity to review the President’s comments before issuing their latest round of upgrades this morning. Citigroup for example is starting the day off with an upgrade of Hasbro (Nasdaq: HAS) stock, while KeyBanc is upgrading both Lowes (NYSE: LOW) and La-Z-Boy (NYSE: LZB) — all three of which companies are highly dependent upon goods imported from abroad.

If the trade war keeps rumbling, and tariffs keep climbing, things could turn ugly for all of these stocks, and for the S&P 500 in general. 

The post S&P 500 (VOO) Live: Alphabet Up, Market Down But Improving Already appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..