US markets staged a strong recovery after the worst sell-off in three months, with the Nasdaq leading the way on Friday jumping 2.3%.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones added 1.5% and 1.1%, respectively, powered ahead by a recovery in the technology and energy sectors.
Retail sales disappoint
The strong sentiment came despite weaker than expected retail sales and consumer confidence, which forced markets to look beyond inflation figures.
Excluding the volatile auto and fuel sales categories, where prices increased over 80%, retail sales actually fell in April by 0.8% as stimulus cheques ran out.
Consumer confidence was also well below expected, printing at 82 rather than 90 points.
US markets trend lower for the week
Over the week all three indices finished lower, the Nasdaq down 2.3%, S&P 500 1.4% and the Dow Jones more resilient, falling 1.1% as many constituents fall into the ‘value’ camp.
Disney+ subscribers weaker than expected
Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) was among the big names to report last week, falling around 3% on Friday despite reporting a normalised profit of US$912 million for the second quarter.
This was a 32% increase in profit on revenue that fell 13% to US$15.6 billion, with the company benefitting from lower production costs and an improvement in advertising.
The company’s Disney+ streaming service was the detractor with new subscribers hitting 8.7 million, well below the 14.4 million forecasted by analysts.
US stock market movers
Here’s how other popular US stocks closed out the week on Friday, with many tech names staging strong recoveries.
- Doordash (NYSE: DASH) up 22.2%
- Farfetch (NYSE: FTCH) up 12.5%
- Affirm (NASDAQ: AFRM) up 11.6%
- Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) up 11.6%
- Carnival Corp (NYSE: CCL) up 8.8%
- Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) up 7.7%
- Uber (NYSE: UBER) up 6.6%
- Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM) up 6.1%
- Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) up 3.5%
- Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) down 2.5%
Back home on the ASX, the S&P/ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) is set to follow Wall Street higher when the market opens on Monday. For all the latest, check out Rask Media’s ASX 200 morning report.
