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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights Advance Micro Devices and Airbnb

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 2, 2022 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Advance Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) and Airbnb (ABNB - Free Report) .

Here are highlights from Tuesday’s Analyst Blog:

Markets Don't Like Prosperity Ahead of the Fed

So the bullishness in early trading today evaporated the closer it got to the Fed's decision to raise interest rates another 75 basis points (bps) to a range of 3.75-4.00% tomorrow afternoon. Even though this figure seems to have been baked into the cake as of three weeks ago or so, since then there's been another creeping hopefulness that the Fed is ready to slow its roll past the November meeting.

After today's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for September, this hopefulness soured. Instead of ducking below 10 million job openings for the first time since June 2021 as expected, the headline went the other way: 10.7 million, up from an upwardly revised 10.3 million for August. These stubbornly robust "worker's market" numbers are not going to help convince the Fed to take its foot off the interest rate gas.

Hires were lower than expected at 6.1 million, while job quits remained steady at 4.1 million, or 2.7% month over month. Construction and Healthcare still have lots of openings, especially in the South, +6.9%, and Midwest, +6.5%. The good news here is these jobs generally are not on the high ends of the pay scale, nor are they in the most expensive regions. Unemployment per job opening reached +0.5%; by comparison, this is way down from the +4.9% in April 2020 and +6.5% in July 2009.

S&P PMI Manufacturingfor October tipped back above the 50-level, indicating growth versus contraction: 50.4, from 49.9 the previous month. ISM Manufacturing also performed a tad better than expected, 50.2% from 50.0% expected, though down from the 50.9% in September. In normal times, this would be looked at as a healthy, if tepid, gathering of equilibrium in domestic goods-producing; nowadays, we're prone to think it's yet another talon to dig in from a hawkish Fed.

And Construction Spending for September also flipped to a positive: +0.2% from -0.6% expected and a slightly upwardly revised -0.6% for August. Again, we're looking at pleasantly healthy numbers and also looking back into late summer, but nothing proving to the Fed they're making any headway on these inflation metrics.

The fear is, of course, that the Fed will tighten too far and not recognize something's broken until it's too late. Take all this data from earlier today: if each of these headlines takes a significant downturn for recent months not yet recorded, resulting in a drastically slowing economy in key areas like goods-producing and the labor market, it might make the Fed's 75-bps hike tomorrow a bridge too far. Thus, we're likely not only still in bear-market-rally conditions, but also "good news is (still) bad news."

Advance Micro Devices met earnings expectations of 67 cents per share today, following the company's lower guide last month. Revenues of $5.57 billion is only marginally lower than expected, though next-quarter revenue guidance was down as well. Softer PC demand in the quarter was a main headwind for the company, which achieved its Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) on its preannouncement. Shares are up +3% on the earnings release; perhaps the report is better than feared.

Carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) rating into its Q3 earnings report, Airbnb outperformed on both top and bottom lines: earnings of $1.79 per share on sales of $2.88 billion outpaced the $1.43 per share and $2.85 billion (itself a triple-digit year-over-year gain in revenues), respectively. Its Average Daily Rate was slightly higher than expected, $156 versus $153.50, but downwardly revised revenue guidance for Q4 is causing a -4% sell-off in after-market trading.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.


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