We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. This includes personalizing content and advertising. To learn more, click here. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
You are being directed to ZacksTrade, a division of LBMZ Securities and licensed broker-dealer. ZacksTrade and Zacks.com are separate companies. The web link between the two companies is not a solicitation or offer to invest in a particular security or type of security. ZacksTrade does not endorse or adopt any particular investment strategy, any analyst opinion/rating/report or any approach to evaluating individual securities.
If you wish to go to ZacksTrade, click OK. If you do not, click Cancel.
Trade Balance, Inventories, Case-Shiller and Target (TGT) All Report
Read MoreHide Full Article
Tuesday, February 28th, 2023
We enter the final trading day of the month of February looking at a down month overall, following January’s positive bounce off December’s relative plummet. Pre-market futures are in the green, but similar to where we closed yesterday: up, but underwhelmingly so. The Dow, which had been +79 points earlier in the early session, are +54 points now. The Nasdaq had dwindled from +18 points to +10 and the S&P 500 has stayed relatively steady, currently +5 points.
The January U.S. Trade Balance in Goods came in lower month over month, but better than expected — based on a nice upward revision to the previous month. Today’s headline was a deficit of -$90.5 billion, which would have been a slight improvement over December’s originally reported -$90.6 billion. But that month’s revision takes it to -$87.7 billion — still economically challenging, but well better than when we crashed through the -$100 billion floor in March of last year.
Advance Retail Inventories for January came in lighter than expected: +0.3% versus a downwardly revised +0.4% (originally +0.7%). Advance Wholesale Inventories for the same month reached a negative -0.4% from an unrevised +0.1% the previous month. These are inflation reads on a smaller scale than, say, CPI or PCE, but these increments may point the way forward in some of the bigger metrics. Inventories are being worked down; this will need to be rectified in the overall supply/demand equation over time.
December Case-Shiller Home Price Index data is also out this morning, with overall 20-city prices +5.8% year over year, well down from November’s +7.6% and thankfully far removed from the painful peak of +10.2% last June. Also, +5.8% is a major softening from the all-time high reported for December of 2021, which was +18.9%. As we saw in Pending Home Sales data yesterday, the clearest sign of higher interest rates having a direct impact on the U.S. economy is in housing prices, with mortgage rates now averaging up towards 7% once again.
Finally, Target (TGT - Free Report) is out with Q4 earnings this morning, easily surpassing earnings estimates by 50 cents per share to $1.89, a +36% positive surprise. Revenues of $31.4 billion in the quarter outpaced the Zacks consensus by +2.29%. The big-box retailer still has a ways to go to reach the year-ago quarter’s earnings of $3.19 per share, but considering the challenges, we’d say this was a successful quarter. Target shares have gained +12% year to date, and are up marginally in pre-market trading on the news. For more on TGT’s earnings, click here.
Image: Bigstock
Trade Balance, Inventories, Case-Shiller and Target (TGT) All Report
Tuesday, February 28th, 2023
We enter the final trading day of the month of February looking at a down month overall, following January’s positive bounce off December’s relative plummet. Pre-market futures are in the green, but similar to where we closed yesterday: up, but underwhelmingly so. The Dow, which had been +79 points earlier in the early session, are +54 points now. The Nasdaq had dwindled from +18 points to +10 and the S&P 500 has stayed relatively steady, currently +5 points.
The January U.S. Trade Balance in Goods came in lower month over month, but better than expected — based on a nice upward revision to the previous month. Today’s headline was a deficit of -$90.5 billion, which would have been a slight improvement over December’s originally reported -$90.6 billion. But that month’s revision takes it to -$87.7 billion — still economically challenging, but well better than when we crashed through the -$100 billion floor in March of last year.
Advance Retail Inventories for January came in lighter than expected: +0.3% versus a downwardly revised +0.4% (originally +0.7%). Advance Wholesale Inventories for the same month reached a negative -0.4% from an unrevised +0.1% the previous month. These are inflation reads on a smaller scale than, say, CPI or PCE, but these increments may point the way forward in some of the bigger metrics. Inventories are being worked down; this will need to be rectified in the overall supply/demand equation over time.
December Case-Shiller Home Price Index data is also out this morning, with overall 20-city prices +5.8% year over year, well down from November’s +7.6% and thankfully far removed from the painful peak of +10.2% last June. Also, +5.8% is a major softening from the all-time high reported for December of 2021, which was +18.9%. As we saw in Pending Home Sales data yesterday, the clearest sign of higher interest rates having a direct impact on the U.S. economy is in housing prices, with mortgage rates now averaging up towards 7% once again.
Finally, Target (TGT - Free Report) is out with Q4 earnings this morning, easily surpassing earnings estimates by 50 cents per share to $1.89, a +36% positive surprise. Revenues of $31.4 billion in the quarter outpaced the Zacks consensus by +2.29%. The big-box retailer still has a ways to go to reach the year-ago quarter’s earnings of $3.19 per share, but considering the challenges, we’d say this was a successful quarter. Target shares have gained +12% year to date, and are up marginally in pre-market trading on the news. For more on TGT’s earnings, click here.
Questions or comments about this article and/or its author? Click here>>