Morning Wrap: Wall St gives back early gains, BNPL stocks under pressure, ASX to fall

Major US benchmarks gave back early gains, oil prices tumble as Biden does not plan to refill strategic reserves and the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to regulate the Buy Now, Pay Later sector.

Let’s dive in.

MARKETS

• 2 out of 11 US sectors advanced

• Healthcare and Financials were the only green sectors

• Real Estate, Tech, Utilities and Energy sectors fell more than 2% 

• 57% of US stocks declined

• 62% of US stocks trade below their 200-day moving average (61% on Thursday, 60% a week ago)

STOCKS

• Wynn Resorts (+7.5%) shares rallied after Credit Suisse upgraded the stock to Outperform. The analysts the stock could almost double after expanding its hotel convention centre in Las Vegas 

• Netflix (+5%) after Evercore RSI upgraded the stock to Outperform. The investment bank believes the company’s valuation could rise more than 30% as it rolls out an ad-supported service and cracks down on password sharing

• Affirm (-1.4%) shares fell after a report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau called for more oversight for the BNPL sector

• Adobe (-16.8%) is acquiring a design software platform known as Figma for approximately US$20bn. This values Figma at around 50 times its forecasted annual recurring revenue for 2022

QUICK BITES

• Yields rally like crypto: The US 2-year Treasury yields rose another 7 bps to 3.86% overnight. In the last 12-months, the 2-year has jumped 1,670% from 0.2%. The last time it rose this much year-on-year was October 1981

• Retail army bought the dip: "Buying significantly picked up on Tuesday, as the market fell -4.4% on the back of higher than expected CPI. At +US$1.5bn, Tuesday was the 8th strongest buying day of the year ... Quality names were in demand whereas Value names were net sold. In terms of sectors, Real Estate stood out as the a popular sector."

• Rock solid US consumers: "In August 2022, consumers spent 10% more than they spent in August 2021 ... the customers are spending more ... the amount of money in their accounts is not going down. It's been relatively flat," said Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan

WORLD NEWS 

• Germany opens green hydrogen doors to Australia (AFR)

• Russia values China's 'balanced position' on Ukraine (Reuters)

• Oil falls as US does not plan to refill reserves (Bloomberg)

• US Department of Labour says rail companies and unions a reach tentative agreement (Bloomberg)

ECONOMY

• Argentina hiked interest rates by 550 bps to 75%

  • Neither of these numbers are typos

• US retail sales rose 0.3% month-on-month to 9.1% year-on-year in August

  • Gasoline and furniture sales were the leading month-on-month decliners

  • Autos, building materials, food and leisure led 

• US NY empire state manufacturing index was -1.5% in September from -31.3 in August

  • “New orders edged higher, and shipments increased sharply . Delivery times held steady and inventories expanded.” the report said

  • “The index for future business conditions rose six points to 8.2., suggesting little optimism about the six-month outlook. The index for future new orders remained depressed, though employment is expected to pick up.” 

• US industrial production fell -0.2% month-on-month to 3.7% year-on-year in August

  • Consensus expected 0.3% and 3.5% respectively

• US Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model estimates real GDP growth of 0.5% in the third quarter

  • Down from 1.4% on 7 September and 2.6% on 1 September

  • Downward revisions to July retail sales data, weak import and export prices, disappointing industrial production has weighed on GDP estimates

COMMODITIES

• Iron ore futures rose 0.1% on Thursday to US$100.7 a tonne

  • “The iron ore market has stabilised with impacts of China’s covid lockdowns and real-estate woes already priced in,” according to Vale  

• Oil prices tumbled after weaker-than-expected US economic data. The US Department of Energy also clarified that it won’t be restocking its Strategic Petroleum Reserve

• Gold prices plummeted as Treasury yields rallied

Tech and growth: The Nasdaq sold off, trading close to a 2-month low. Not a good look for risk assets. Bitcoin, another risk barometer also fell -2.1% overnight to US$19,800.

Nasdaq Composite chart (Source: TradingView, Annotations by Market Index)

Interestingly, the ARK Innovation ETF rose 2.2%, which goes to show stock selection is always important.

BNPL under pressure: The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to start regulating BNPL. A few snippets from their report:

• "Given their rapid growth, we want to ensure that Buy Now, Pay Later companies are subjected to appropriate supervisory examinations, just as credit companies are."

• "We're already seeing deterioration in credit performance on Buy Now, Pay Later loans. In 2020, 2.9 percent of borrowers in our dataset "charged off" on a Buy Now Pay Later Loan, which jumped to 3.8% in 2021.

• "And public filings show that this upwards trend is continuing through the first half of 2022."

Not a good look for already dead names like Zip (ASX: ZIP) and Sezzle (ASX: SZL).

Lithium and uranium cave in: These two sectors have outperformed in the past few weeks and held up relatively well Wednesday's selloff. Now they're starting to cave in and break below key areas. The VanEck Rare Earth/Strategic Metals ETF tumbled -4.57%, falling below the key 200-day moving average. Likewise, the Global X Uranium ETF fell -4.04%, still slightly above the 200-day but without much breathing room.

VanEck Rare Earth/Strategic Metals ETF chart (Source: TradingView)

Global X Uranium ETF chart (Source: TradingView)

Energy stuck in channel: Minus the brief rally in late August, oil has been stuck in a downward channel, marking lower highs and lower lows. It always manages to conjure up a rally, but so far, these rallies have been sold into. The dip overnight could see some weakness follow through to local energy names.

Brent crude oil chart (Source: TradingView, Annotations by Market Index)

Stocks going ex-dividend:

• Fri: AHC, ARA, CAR, CAU, PPC, SNL

• Mon: IPG, QUB, SSM

• Tue: None 

• Wed: ABC, COG

• Thu: BFL, LFS, VLS 

ASX corporate actions occurring today:

• Dividends paid: ARG, ASH, BAP, EDV, IPH, NGI, OZL, PGG, PNI, WHC

• Listing: OCT

• Issued shares: 360, AEV, AYA, CLZ, COI, ELO, IPB, MCR, MFF, MFG, NHC, OCT, PEC, PFT, QRI, SDF, SYR, TON, VOR, ZIP

Other things of interest (AEST): 

• China House Price Index at 11:30 am

• China Industrial Production at 12:00 pm

• China Retail Sales at 12:00 pm

• China Fixed Asset Investment at 12:00 pm

• UK Retail Sales at 4:00 pm

• US Michigan Consumer Sentiment at 12:00 am