Stock Market Today | April 27, 2021

Here's what happened in the markets today, Tuesday, April 27th -- in 5 minutes or less.

It was another super quiet day: The markets are definitely in “waiting mode”

Let’s take a look at the indices:

The Dow and S&P 500 were unchanged, and the NASDAQ finished 0.47% lower.

So what happened?

Not much. The markets are definitely in “waiting mode”

Yesterday, Tesla (TSLA) reported earnings. They reported first-quarter profit above expectations, but sales missed the mark slightly. I’m not surprised by these profits: After all, they made $101 Million with Bitcoin! Without these profits, it probably wouldn’t look good. And that’s why TSLA is down 2.5% today.

Thus far, approx. 30% of the companies in the S&P 500 have already reported earnings. So we’re not even halfway through earnings season.  

And this week, “Big Tech” is reporting earnings: Tesla (TSLA) is out of the way now, and later this week, we will hear from Apple Inc. (AAPL), Facebook Inc. (FB) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN).

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) just reported earnings, and they had a great quarter: Revenue grew by 19% year over year. That’s the biggest quarterly increase the company has posted since 2018, thanks to better than expected PC sales due to the shortages last year because of the Coronavirus

And also Alphabet  (GOOG) just reported earnings, and they knocked it out of the park: 
Google’s revenue rose 34% percent from the same period a year prior. And YouTube was the clear winning during the pandemic: People watched more videos, and YouTube ads grew nearly 50% year-over-year. The stock is up more than 4% in after-hours trading.

Another earnings winner was United Parcel Service (UPS).  Shares jumped 10.5% after UPS reported first-quarter profit and revenue that were well above expectations.

Today, the Fed started their 2-day meeting, and tomorrow, the FOMC statement will be released. Nobody is expecting any major changes to the current money and interest policy. BUT: in the past few weeks, we have seen some GREAT economic reports that were much stronger than expected. And at some point, the Fed is going to have to acknowledge that, and this could mean that they tighten their policy earlier than expected. 

Also tomorrow, Biden will outline the details of the 2nd part of his “Build Back Better” plan. He already revealed his infrastructure plan a few weeks ago, and he proposed funding it by raising corporate taxes. Part 2 will be the “American Families Plan”, and he is expected to reveal details on Wednesday night. Last week, Biden floated the idea of raising taxes for long-term capital gains from 23.8% to as high as 43.4%.

And for these 3 reasons (Earnings, Fed Statement and Biden’s speech), the markets are in a nervous ‘wait and see mode”

So what can we expect for the remainder of this week?

Tomorrow is the big day: 
First, we have the FOMC statement that happens during market hours. So this can definitely move the markets. 

And then Biden speaks in the evening. We will probably see a reaction on Thursday morning. 

Soooo…  after 2 quiet days, we could see 2 volatile days ahead, which should give us some great trading opportunities!

This wraps up today's stock market news in 5 min or less.

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