New Volatility: Already Commonplace?

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Market futures are in the red in today’s pre-market, keeping form with this new volatility we’re growing to understand as part of our investment environment of the past couple weeks now. The Dow soared another 400+ points in regular trading yesterday, yet remain in the negative year to date because of last week’s shedding of valuation.

The Dow, which looks to only be trading in triple-digit swings of late, is expected to open down 150 points as of this minute. Things can certainly swing quickly, as we’ve seen, but without much pressure from outside-the-market events this morning, we see the current trading habitat as more or less finding its own equilibrium. Of course, that might change on a dime, as well.

A new budget is being hashed out in Washington DC, which looks to add plenty more deficit spending to the nation’s bottom line, but the market has not directly reacted to this. In fact, it may not — at least until the Fed, under new direction of Jay Powell, decides what to do about the changing economic environment.

As far as Q4 earnings are concerned — hey! remember them? — we see two prominent better-than-expected losses from two 21st century companies, Under Armour (NYSE:UAA) and Blue Apron (NYSE:APRN) . Both stocks are up nearly 10% in today’s pre-market.

Blue Apron, which had a difficult time finding its way into the publicly traded market last year, is seeing 9% pre-market gains on its lower-than-expected loss of 20 cents per share, better than the -27 cents in the Zacks consensus. With the help of its new CEO, the company also brought in $187.7 million for the quarter, above the $183 million expected. Costs related to building out new fulfillment centers have eaten into company profits, but $248 average revenue per customer and -20% cost of goods sold year over year were factors toward positive sentiment on Wall Street this morning.

Under Armour initially blasted up 13% upon the release of its Q4 earnings report, posting -20 cents per share versus -23 cents a year ago. This bottom line result was worse than expected, though revenues of $1.4 billion was higher than the Zacks consensus, and guidance for full-year 2018 looks strong, as well.

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

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