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People walk in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 28, 2024 in New York City.
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Stock prices have plummeted this week. Investors are hoping the upcoming earnings season will help revive this year’s banner rally.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect first-quarter profits for S&P 500 companies to rise 3.1% from a year ago. If this happens, it will be the third consecutive quarter of increased profits. Full-year profit is expected to increase by approximately 10.7%.
After the 2023 crash, all three major U.S. indexes have repeatedly hit record highs this year, but hot inflation data and hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve have pushed Wall Street to cut interest rates six times this year. I had no choice but to lower my prediction to three times.
Some traders credit strong corporate earnings and a resilient economy in the fourth quarter with increasing optimism that the U.S. will avoid a recession and, in turn, a continued rally in the market. ing.
However, the stock started to fall shortly after its best start since 2019. The S&P 500 fell 2% this week as strong inflation data and warnings from Federal Reserve officials raised concerns that a long-awaited rate cut could be delayed longer than expected. Rising bond yields and soaring oil prices are also weighing on stock prices.
Some investors say stock prices may accelerate again during the first quarter earnings season.
“If we see continued growth in corporate profits, that will ultimately be the catalyst for the market to continue to function,” said Matthew Stith, director of equity research at Bartlett Wealth Management.
Earnings season begins next week, with quarterly updates from Delta Air Lines, Citigroup, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
Investors will analyze the report for clues that consumer spending remains strong. The job market remains resilient even as interest rates remain at 23-year highs, and recession fears have receded in recent months. But Americans’ attitudes toward the economy have worsened, and lower-income consumers are cutting back on spending, painting a mixed picture about the health of the economy.
“Earnings season sees many companies thriving, but an increasing number of companies struggling,” Yun Yu Ma, chief investment officer at BMO Wealth Management, said in a note Wednesday. “You’re going to see a polarized market.”
Wall Street will get a glimpse of the economy’s strength when the latest jobs report is released Friday morning. Economists expect the U.S. economy to add 200,000 jobs in March, according to FactSet.
Last week, a group of six Latino immigrant workers fell to their deaths while working on Baltimore’s doomed Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Once reconstruction work begins, more Latino immigrants will almost certainly join efforts to reopen the vital transportation artery, my colleagues Ramisha Maruf and Gloria Pazmino report.
Considering that Latino workers make up about a third of the U.S. construction industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they make up just 19% of the total U.S. population and 17.6% of the workforce. This is a very excessive proportion. More than two-thirds of Hispanic construction workers in the United States are foreign-born.
For the millions of recent Latino immigrants to the United States, construction jobs have low barriers to entry and are plentiful. A stable construction job also allows for a path to upward mobility.
“We are not just trying to change our lives and achieve our goals and dreams. It is also all the people we have left behind in our country, and we support them and help them There are,” construction worker Reynaldo Quintero told CNN. “We’re the ones people call when they’re sick and when they can’t afford food.”
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Disney is restricting password sharing for its Disney+ streaming service as part of a larger effort to increase sign-ups and revenue, my colleague Samantha Murphy-Kelly reports.
CEO Bob Iger said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the company will begin cracking down on password sharing for its popular streaming service Disney+ in some countries in June and more broadly in September. Disney+ and Disney’s other streaming services explicitly require customers to agree not to use their usernames and passwords to impersonate others, but the company does not widely enforce that policy. yeah.
Hulu, one of Disney’s other streaming services, began restricting how often customers can share their account login information outside their household starting March 14.
The crackdown comes as rival Netflix claims a recent crackdown on password sharing has caused a surge in its subscriber numbers. Shortly after the crackdown went into effect last May, Netflix added 100,000 new accounts in the next two days, according to data from Antenna. Netflix also saw a more than 100% increase in subscribers compared to the average over the past 60 days.
Similar enhancements at Disney could put the company’s streaming platform on the path to profitability. Disney+ continues to be in the red, but the company said it expects to be profitable soon.
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