Morning Wrap: US stocks fall on renewed banking fears, Apple tops earnings expectations, ASX to fall

US stocks finished lower as regional bank shares continue to crash, Apple posts a better-than-expected first quarter on record iPhone sales and authorises a US$90bn share buyback, PacWest Bancorp shares fall 50% after confirming strategic options including a possible sale, European Central Bank hikes by 25 bps and Charts of the Week.

Let's dive in.

S&P 500 SESSION CHART

S&P 500 falls amid a sharp decline for regional banks (Source: TradingView)

MARKETS

• S&P 500 down 2.6% over the last four sessions

• Unease in the regional bank sector continues to weigh on market sentiment, the S&P Regional Bank ETF fell 5.5% and down 15.4% over the last four sessions

• US 2-year Treasury yield settled slightly lower in choppy trading between session highs of 3.94% and lows of 3.66%

• Markets pricing in probability of dovish Fed pivot as soon as June (Bloomberg)

• Fed pause may not signal all-clear for US stocks (Reuters)

• Powell betting Fed can bring down inflation without rising unemployment (NY Times)

STOCKS

• Shopify cutting ~20% of its workforce; follows 10% cut last July (CNBC)

• UBS plans to retain Credit Suisse's investment-banking unit and sell the rest (Reuters)

• Qualcomm gives light guidance as phone chip sales fall 17% (CNBC)

EARNINGS 

Ferrari (+5.1%): Double beat, shipments up 10% year-on-year, net revenues up 20% to 1.4bn euros, EBITDA margin at an all-time high of 37.6%, stock is up 51% in the last 12 months.

• "Our order book already extends into 2025 with an award-winning product portfolio. We have decided to reopen orders for the Purosangue, suspended due to an initial unprecedented demand, and launched the Roma Spider to further enrich our offer.” – Benedetto Vigna  

Carvana (+1.8%, after hours +24.3%): Double beat, narrower-than-expected quarterly loss of US$286m, hopes to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter and continues to cut down on inventory and advertising spend.  

Apple (-1.0%, after hours +1.7%): Double beat, Q1 revenues down 2.5% year-on-year – a second straight quarter of negative growth, iPhone sales of 51,334 vs. 48,660 expected – marking a record quarter for iPhone sales, authorised US$90bn share buyback.

• "During the March quarter, we continued to face foreign exchange headwinds, which had an impact of more than 500 bps as well as ongoing challenges related to the macroeconomic environment.” – CEO Tim Cook

• "iPhone reached a March quarter revenue record, thanks to very strong performance in emerging markets from South Asia, and India to Latin America, and the Middle East.”

• "Paid subs showed strong growth, we now have more than 975m paid subscriptions across the services on our platform, 150m during the last 12 months and nearly double the number of paid subs, we had only 3 years ago.”  

• "I was just there and the dynamism in the market the vibrancy is unbelievable … There are a lot of people coming into the middle class and I really feel that India is at a tipping point and it's great to be there.” 

Booking.com (-1.6%, after hours -2.1%): Revenue jumped 40% to US$3.7bn and in-line with analyst expectations, EBITDA missed, gross travel bookings up 44% to US$39.4bn. 

• "We saw a strong start to the year with first quarter room nights and gross bookings reaching our highest quarterly levels ever and both metrics surpassing our previous expectation.” – Glenn D. Fogel 

Paramount Global (-28.4%): Double miss, cut its dividend to 5 cents from 24 cents to “further enhance our ability to deliver long-term value for shareholders as we move toward streaming profitability”, TV revenue fell 8% to US$5.2bn while streaming revenue rose 39% to US$1.5bn. 

BANKING CRISIS 

• PacWest Bancorp said to weight strategic options, including possible sale (Bloomberg)

• PacWest in talks with potential partners, notes solid liquidity and deposits (Reuters)

• Nearly half of Americans worry their bank deposits aren't safe (Bloomberg)

ECONOMY

• US jobs market softening, slumping productivity boosts labour costs (Reuters)

• ECB hikes by 25 bps, expects more hikes at slower pace (FT)

• Norway hikes 25 bps to 3.25% and said it would likely hike again in June (Reuters)

• China Caixin manufacturing PMI slips into contraction (Reuters)

• Eurozone PMIs show business activity growth (Reuters)

Deeper Dive

Charts of the Week

This segment of the morning wrap brings you weekly technical commentary on the ASX 200 and some of the more interesting charts in the market. These are not meant as recommendations. They are for illustrative purposes only. Any discussion of past performance is for educational purposes only. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future return. Always do your own research.

ASX 200 – Bulls roll over

ASX 200 chart (Source: Commsec)

It took a while but the bulls ultimately laid down their arms at the 7400 level and the index has since rolled over, currently trading sub 7200. With another bearish lead from Wall Street overnight, the question everyone is asking is ‘where will the index find some support?’ The 7K round number is an obvious answer, whilst 6885 is the next true technical support level. There is really nothing on offer for trend traders at the moment and, if the pundits are to be believed, we could be in a sideways grind for a while. Fortunately, even in a sideways market there will still be stocks that are trending and providing opportunities.

Evolution Mining (EVN) – Evolution evolving nicely

(Source: Commsec)

Over the past three or four update, I have featured a gold stock. There are no apologies for that, gold stocks are the ones that are showing some of the best trends. Insurance stocks have also been popping up consistently on my scans, for anyone who is interested. But the best looking charts have undoubtedly been in the gold subsector and one might expect this to continue. My colleague Ally Selby will today on Livewire publish a piece profiling famed US investor Stanley Druckenmiller’s current conviction trades. One of them is long gold. If you’re not on this train already, it seems it is not too late. As for EVN, it has just broken higher once again, and has all the classic signs of a strong momentum trade.

Medibank Private (MPL) – Stars aligning

(Source: Commsec)

I mentioned the insurers above and MPL has had one of the better runs over the past six months (mind you, it was smashed on October last year on the cyber incident). Yesterday Scott Olson from Firetrail Investments wrote a piece on Livewire tilted An earnings kicker from the return of immigration, talking to the benefits MPL is enjoying from a host of factors. Throw into the mix an expected premium increase on 1 June (just around the corner) and the stars appear to be aligning for MPL.

That is all reflected in the price chart, with the stock rising steadily over the past six months and volumes picking up on the way through. As the stink of the cyber breach wore off, more and more people have been piling back in and this price chart now has solid momentum. With the price bouncing nicely off the $3.40 level and volumes remaining solid, and the business likely to continue enjoying a number of tailwinds, a new leg higher could be underway. 

ASX corporate actions occurring today:

• Trading ex-div: Partners Group Global Income Fund (PGG) – $0.013

• Dividends paid: Elanor Commercial Property Fund (ECF) – $0.0235, Wingara (WNR) – $0.006, Seven Group (SVW) – $0.23 

• Listing: None

Economic calendar (AEST):

• 11:30 am: RBA Statement of Monetary Policy

• 11:30 am: Australia Home Loans

• 11:45 am: China Caixin Services PMI

• 10:30 pm: US Unemployment Rate