Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Markets fought back from fairly deep in the red as of today’s open, closing mostly mixed across the major indexes: the Dow was +141 points, +0.35%, The S&P 500 +8 points, +0.15%, the Nasdaq slipped -15 points, -0.09%, while the small-cap Russell 2000 lost -9 points, -0.46%. Bond yields had threatened to move higher early in the session, but came back down to +4.16% on the 10-year and +3.61% on 2s.
PCE Remains Steady for March: 0.0% on Headline & Core
The biggest non-employment-related economic report today was the March
Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), which the Fed name-drops every time it discusses what data it’s relying on for answers regarding the economy. On headline month-over-month PCE, this came in at 0.0%, as expected and -30 basis points (bps) below the previous month. Year over year, headline PCE reached +2.3% — a tick above expectations but down 40 bps from the upwardly revised +2.7% for February.
Core PCE strips out volatile food and energy expenditures, but on headline month over month, it made no difference: 0.0%. This was down from the +0.1% projected and the +0.4% reported a month ago. Core PCE year over year came in as expected at +2.6%, down from the upwardly revised +3.0% from the prior month. It’s hard to find steadier numbers than these, and they remain relatively close to the Fed’s optimal inflation level of +2.0%.
Pending Home Sales Highest in 6 Months
After last week’s surprise New Home Sales gains — 724K seasonally adjusted, annualized units easily outperformed the 685K estimate and 674K reported the prior month —
Pending Home Sales brought similarly pleasing results this morning: +6.1% for March swept past the +1% expected and upwardly revised +2.1% for February. This is the highest read since 7.5% back in September of last year.
The South did most of the heavy lifting again, surging +9.8% for the month. The Midwest was next in line at +4.9%, with the West up +4.8%. Only the Northeast was in negative territory, at -0.5%. But considering the dire circumstances the housing market has endured over the past couple of years, it’s nice to see some signs of life there.
Q1 Earnings at a Glance After the Close: Microsoft, Meta and Qualcomm
Meta Platforms META stormed ahead of estimates in its Q1 report out after today’s close. Earnings of $6.43 per share easily outdid the $5.22 expected in the Zacks consensus, while revenues of $42.31 billion surpassed the $41.22 billion estimate. Daily Active People (DAP) grew +6% year over year to 3.43 billion on Facebook, Instagram, Whats App and other social media owned by the conglomerate. The high-end of next quarter’s revenue projection, at $45.5 billion, is far hotter than the $43.3 billion our analysts were expecting.
Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.Microsoft MSFT also beat on top and bottom lines this afternoon: earnings cruised to +18% year over year to $3.46 billion, knocking out the $3.20 billion estimate and $2.94 per share reported this time a year ago. Revenues of $70.1 billion in the quarter made easy work of the projected $68.4 billion. Azure cloud sales added another +20% to the company’s gains, to $42.4 billion in the quarter. The company has only one earnings miss in the past five years.
Qualcomm QCOM also outpaced estimates this afternoon in its fiscal Q2 report, beating by 3 cents to $2.85 per share on $10.83 billion in revenues, sweeping past the Zacks consensus estimate $10.67 billion for the quarter. Yet a lower revenue guide for Q3 is sending shares down -6.3% in the after-market.
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QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM): Free Stock Analysis Report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report Meta Platforms, Inc. (META): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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