Originally published by Rivkin Securities
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock was in the headlights last night after chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE:TSM) gave weak guidance for its second quarter chip sales (which are used in iPhones). The lower than expected guidance implies that sales of iPhones may be lower than expected. AAPL fell 2.8% compared to a drop on the Nasdaq 100 of 0.85%. IBM (NYSE:IBM) stock also failed to rally afters yesterday’s fall and added another 0.7% to its losses.
Bond yield have been climbing over the past few days with the long end now back near the year-to-date highs from late February. The 10-year yield is now at 2.91%, having rallied from below 2.8% just a few weeks ago. Short term rates are also climbing which has been causing the yield curve (difference between long and short rates) to flatten.
Commodities as an asset class have rallied significantly over the last two weeks. The Thomson Reuters CRB commodity index is up 5% since the 6th April, partly due to large rallies in aluminium and nickel prices. The rallies are thought to be due to sanctions imposed by the US on Russia that may affect exports from Russian aluminium producer Rusal which happens to be the second largest aluminium producer in the world.
Yesterday Australia released its employment data which came out significantly weaker than expected with just 4,900 new jobs created and the number actually hides a loss of 19,900 full-time jobs which were offset by a gain of 24,800 part-time jobs. The numbers were significantly below expectations of 20,000 net new jobs. The data caused a drop in the Australian dollar to US$0.773 from above US$0.78 earlier in the session. UK retail sales data also came out worse than expected last night with a fall of 1.2% versus expectations of an 0.5% decline.
Data Releases:
- Canada CPI 10:30pm AEST
- Canada Retail Sales 10:30pm AEST