Another week in the books and another week of wild action capped off with our weaker-than-expected jobs data on Friday morning. I think the Fed will find raising rates even once a tough task, let alone twice or more this year. In addition, the jobless data on Friday probably has taken a June rate hike off the table as well, no matter what the Fed heads say between now and the June meeting.
On the earnings front last week, Zillow (Z) was a pleasant surprise on Tuesday after the close, though the troika of Priceline (PCLN), Tesla (TSLA) and TripAdvisor (TRIP) all dropped the ball on Wednesday. Yelp (YELP) was the lone winner on Thursday, with the likes of Tableau Software (DATA), FireEye (FEYE), GoPro (GPRO) and Square (SQ) all getting whacked as far as earnings went for last week.
Of course, Apple (AAPL) continued its losing ways despite a nice Tuesday after CEO Tim Cook appeared on Jim's "Mad Money" show Monday night. Apple closed the week at almost a two-year low, which is not a surprise to me given the consistent lack of true innovation except for stuff such as color, thickness, smaller, bigger, fatter, thinner, faster, more pixels and so on. I mean, come on, the best earbuds in the world? Will that make you run out and upgrade your iPhone? Cest la vie, mes amis.
We are almost done with earnings season but have a few techland stragglers still to go, beginning with JD.com (JD) on Monday morning, Rackspace (RAX) and SolarCity (SCTY) on Monday afternoon and Electronic Arts (EA) on Tuesday after the closing bell.
Regarding domestic economic data, we will have the usual plethora of stuff, but the biggies are NFIB Business Optimism on Tuesday, jobless claims on Thursday, and retail sales and producer price index (PPI) data on Friday.
On the international economic data front, the biggies are China consumer price index (CPI) and PPI on Monday, and German and eurozone GDP on Friday.
So, last week a drone crashed into a couple's home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle and the local police booked the drone into evidence and are seeking a warrant to view the footage and identify the owner. Can you imagine when drone delivery becomes commonplace? Think about drones from just the food delivery places zipping around your neighborhood, to say nothing about drones from the likes of Wal-Mart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN). Talk about all our canine kids going absolutely bonkers every time a drone lands on your front yard. Noise pollution, anyone?
Finally, are you as happy as I am to see the end of this earnings season? However, all said and done, it turned out to be just as I had predicted at the onset, which is companies that report beats and guide well will do very well and those that do not will get taken to the woodshed. Of course, I didn't quite expect so many trips to the woodshed, that's for sure.
With that, I wish each and every one of you a safe and joyful weekend with your loved ones.
