The Overnight Report: Earnings Beat Credit Ratings

This story features BHP GROUP LIMITED, and other companies. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: BHP

By Greg Peel

The Dow closed up 65 points or 0.5% while the S&P gained 0.6% to 1312 and the Nasdaq rose 0.4%.

Monday's panic sell-off on Wall Street saw the Dow lose 250 points initially but close 140 points down, and last night another 65 points were clawed back. Last night Wall Street got over the US rating scare and refocused on the fundamentals of economic data and earnings results.

March housing starts surprised economists by rising 7.2% to 549,000 when 520,000 was expected. Single family home starts rose 7.7% but while these figures look good, the reality is family homes starts are down 21% on on year ago.

Goldman Sachs posted earnings of $4.38ps compared to $3.95ps forecasts but only before paying Warren Buffet a preferred dividend of US$1.64bn. Berkshire Hathaway chimed in alongside the US government in 2008 with a US$5bn “rescue” investment in preferred stock. Goldman shares fell 1.3% in the session.

Healthcare staple Johnson & Johnson (Dow) came to the rescue however, posting a strong result which saw its shares jump 3.7%.

US coal miner Peabody Energy posted US67cps versus a US60cps estimate and looked forward to recovery in Australian production and sales post the floods. Mining difficulties at a Colorado mine disappointed the market however, and Peabody shares fell 0.4%.

Last night's stock market gains were nevertheless driven by the energy and materials sectors in a reversal of Monday's sell-off. On Monday the downgrading of the US credit status was overwhelmed by talk of a Greek debt restructure, thus sending the US dollar up sharply when one would otherwise assume a fall. Last night Greece successfully auctioned 13-week Treasury bills and a preliminary measure of the eurozone composite PMI came in better than expected. Hence the euro bounced back and the US dollar index fell 0.6% to 75.07.

The dollar drop helped West Texas oil, which Wall Street is fixated on, to a US$1.03 bounce back to US$108.15/bbl, albeit Brent slipped US31c to US$121.33/bbl. Base metals in London also saw some recovery with copper up 1.2% and aluminium up 1.8%.

Someone had a red hot go at gold, achieving a lunch time print at US$1500/oz. The market was not ready yet however, and gold slipped back to be steady on the session at US$1496.30/oz. Assaults on big figure summits usually take a little more preparation. But silver? Is this metal omnipotent? It jumped 1.3% last night to US$43.99/oz. Silver started the year under US$30.

The Aussie ticked up a tad to US$1.0521. The SPI Overnight gained 31 points or 0.7%.

The attention then turned to after-the-bell results from the tech sector. IBM (Dow) posted a slight win on the top and bottom lines but clearly the Street wanted more, sending IBM shares down 1.5% in the after-market. Any disappointment over IBM was swept away by the all conquering Intel (Dow), which posted a big upside surprise in both earnings and revenue. Intel shares are up 5% in the after-market and suggest a decent opening on Wall Street tonight, ceteris paribus. Yahoo also posted a well received result, and its shares are up 2.4%.

The earnings wagon rolls on tonight, featuring more tech sector results from Apple and United Technologies (Dow), as well as telco AT&T (Dow), financials American Express (Dow) and Wells Fargo, gold and copper miner Freeport McMoRan, and logistics bellwether Union Pacific. March existing home sales are also in the frame.

Beforehand, however, the local market will see quarterly production reports today from BHP Billiton ((BHP)) and PanAust ((PNA)) and Wesfarmers ((WES)) will report quarterly sales from its retail businesses.

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