Stock futures edged lower Wednesday evening, with the major indexes hovering slightly below all-time highs as a parade of strong earnings results helped buoy equity prices.
Contracts on the Dow dipped. The 30-stock index set a fresh record intraday high during the regular trading day, markings its first all-time high since mid-August. The S&P 500 also logged a sixth straight day of gains in its longest winning streak since the start of July. The Nasdaq ended lower as traders took profits on shares of technology giant Netflix (NFLX), even after the company reported stronger-than-expected quarterly subscriber growth. Bitcoin prices (BTC-USD) held near its all-time high of over $66,000 reached earlier on Wednesday.
Estimates-topping earnings results from companies from Verizon (VZ) to Anthem (ANTM) and Abbott Laboratories (ABT) extended a streak of strong quarterly reports kicked off by the big banks last week. Tesla (TSLA) shares ticked lower in late trading after the electric-vehicle maker posted profits that exceeded estimates but revenues that fell short.
With stocks trading near record levels, these kinds of earnings beats will need to be maintained in order to fuel further appreciation, some strategists said.
“Both the fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus has been driving markets really since the ricochet off the bottom of COVID,” Michael Vogelzang, chief investment officer for Captrust, told Yahoo Finance Live on Wednesday. “What we’re looking at now is, the easy work is done. The Fed is beginning to taper shortly, we expect. We don’t expect interest rates to rise much from here. But what it means is that the market is reasonably valued. It’s not cheap by anyone’s estimation. And in order to progress here … we’re going to have to see stronger earnings growth, and continued strong earnings growth.”
“We’ve seen the peak cycle acceleration,” he added. “Now it’s the hard work – can we continue to create profit growth in our various companies? Can the market and the economies around the globe work through some of the logistical issues?”
So far this earnings season, many goods-producing companies have highlighted concerns over rising input prices and ongoing supply chain disruptions. Tesla noted in its earnings release that “a variety of challenges, including semiconductor shortages, congestion at ports and rolling blackouts, have been impacting our ability to keep factories running at full speed.” And Procter & Gamble (PG) earlier this week estimated it would see over $2 billion in expenses this fiscal year related to rising commodity and freight costs.
However, investors have so far at least momentarily looked through these concerns, and clutched to optimism that these pressures will prove temporary.
“What we have done, in large part, by having massive aggregate demand outpacing aggregate supply is likely not destroyed demand. We likely delayed demand,” Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley-National, told Yahoo Finance…
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