Shesa's Investment Blog

Q4 GDP increased at a 3.3% vs. 2%. It was much much beyond Wall Street expectations. For the whole year of 2023 it was up 2.5%. A strong pace of consumer spending helped drive the expansion, as did government spending. The Core prices for personal consumption expenditures ( PCE ) rose 2% for the period, while the headline rate was 1.7%. Netflix ( NFLX ) kicked-off big tech earnings for Q4. Here is the result. Earnings: $2.11 per share vs. $2.22 per share expected. Revenue: $8.83 billion vs. $8.71 billion expected. Total paid memberships: 260.8 million vs. 256 million expected. It newly added 13.1 million subscribers. Tesla ( TSLA ) reported Q4 earnings that missed estimates and issued a downbeat full-year production outlook.  It earned 0.71 vs. 0.73 estimated. Revenue came at $25.2 billion vs..$25.6 billion estimated. The profit was impacted by costs associated with increasing Cybertruck production and spending on research and development and artificial intelligence pr...

On Friday, the S&P 500 gained 1.23% to 4,839.81, breaking its previous record close from January 2022. The Dow Jones was up 395 points, or 1.05%, to close at 37,863.80. Both S&P 500 and DOW have hit all-time high . The Nasdaq 100 also closed all-time high. The Nasdaq composite Index was up 1.70% to 15,310.97,  7% away from hitting all-time high . If the big tech earnings goes well then we can anticipate Nasdaq to hit new all-time high.  Retail Sales : The consumer went wild this holiday season. Retail sales in December was up 0.6% vs. 0.4% in November. Core retail sales (excluding autos and gas) also rose 0.6% month-over-month, which is double the consensus expectation for a 0.3% rise. On a year-over-year basis, retail sales growth accelerated from 4% in November to 5.6% in December. The consumers have been persistent on their spending and keeping U.S economy growth intact.  Chip sector was on fire last week after Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) - the worl...

Weekly UPDATES On January 11, the Stock indexes crashed after  December CPI report  as inflation went up to  3.4% in December  from 3.1% in November. However, after hitting a low, stocks recovered and rallied for the rest of the day.  On Jan 12, the producer price index ( PPI - wholesale prices), fell 0.1% in December and up 1% from a year ago. This was a good news. Despite the good PPI report, the stock indexes were down on Friday due to uncertainty as U.S carried strike against Yemen’s Houthi forces on Friday to protect shipping in the "Red Sea". Because they are creating a supply chain crisis for several countries in the World.  Microsoft (MSFT) officially overtook Apple as the world’s most valuable company with its $2.885 trillion market cap just above Apple’s $2.871 trillion value at the close of trading. This would be a stock to watch this year. Nvidia ( NVDA ) At the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) the company launched a plethora of new AI ...

It was not a great week for the stock market to start the year. Wall Street  had a rough week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.5% for the week, and the S&P 500 slid 0.6%. But Nasdaq was the worst performer falling 3.25% for the week. QuantumScape (QS) This stock was discussed in my Investment Meet and also in my January blog. The stock soared more than 43% after reaching an important milestone with Volkswagen (parent company of BMW). The solid-state battery technology promises longer range, shorter charging time and maximum safety. The solid-state battery significantly exceeded the requirement.it’s expected to go more than 310,000 miles without any loss of range for the battery. If it works and can have mass production then it may change the EV paradigm and QuantumScape. So also the stock price!! But it may take a couple of years for mass production and moreover things may also go wrong, so one must do due diligence. Only risk taking and patient investors should th...

  By Shesa Nayak U.S. Stock Market Updates   Wishing all my blog readers a VERY HAPPY and PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR-2024! I wish all of you a wonderful and profitable year 2024!!   After having a brutal 2022, stock market bounced back with a vengeance in 2023. The Christmas came early for investors on 13 December – in the form of dovish tone from Federal Reserve. The FOMC indicated that they expect three rate cuts in 2024, four times in 2025, and three more times in 2026. The stock market roared, NASDAQ was the star performer, up 43.4%, S&P 500 rose 24.2% and DOW was up 13.7% for the year. Moreover, Nasdaq 100 was up humongous 55% . For Nasdaq it was the best year in two decades since 1999 .com boom. Last year’s rally can primarily be attributed to “ AI driven rally ” and Nvidia was the star performer rising 239% for the year. By the way, Nvidia has risen 64,000% since its IPO since 1999. Quick Recap of 2023: In a nutshell, the whole year primarily revolved aro...