Dec 20th, 2023 – On Wednesday, the Dow Jones and Nasdaq ended their 9-day winning streaks, decreasing by 1.27% to 37,082 and 1.50% to 14,777.94, respectively. The S&P 500 also slipped by 1.47% to 4,698.35.
The Conference Board announced that the consumer confidence index increased to a 5-month high of 110.7 in December. It shows us that American consumer’s optimism about future labor conditions is growing.
November existing home sales increased by 0.8%, to 3.82 million units, however Economists were expecting a fall of 0.8% to 3.76 million.
One of our portfolio holdings, Toyota (TM) (Purchased 0.5 units @ 186.34) announced that they will recall about 1 million cars because of a possible risk of malfunction of airbags, increasing the risk of injury. They also announced that they will stop shipments of all its Daihatsu (owned by Toyota) vehicles due to the revelation of Daihatsu cheating in safety tests. Investors reacted to the news negatively, with a 2.18% decrease in the share price of Toyota.
FedEx (FDX) decreased by 12% after the company declared a decrease in revenue projections driven by a decrease in demand that hit sales. They also announced $3.99 Earnings Per Share compared to a $4.18 estimate and a revenue of $22.17 billion vs a $22.41 estimate for the three-month period that ended November 30.
Argenx (ARGX) experienced a 23.5% decline in its price of share after the therapy developed by the Netherlands-based biotech company for an autoimmune condition leading to skin blistering did not bring expected results in a late-stage trial.
Author: Kaan Pinar