S&P 500 ekes out slight gain with data, megacap earnings eyed

S&P 500 ekes out slight gain with data, megacap earnings eyed

By Chuck Mikolajczak

Mon April 28, 2025 4:21 PM

All three indexes spent most of the day in the red, but were up the morning, the Dow up some 300 points, before declining into deep losses in the afternoon, the Dow reaching a low of a -250 by 1:30, the Nasdaq doing considerably worse at a -250 as well by 1:30. The main trigger was poor performance by Nvidia and Amazon, Nvidia being hit particularly hard by China’s Huawei announcing their testing of a new super-AI chip that they hope will leave their U.S. competitor in the dust. The good news is that after 1:30, they all came all the way back with the Dow closing with another 3-digit gain and the tech sectors reaching break-even. And though the S&P’s gain was only slight, it still marked its fourth straight advance. 

But four of the Magnificent Seven are due for Q1 reporting this week so all eyes will be on how their respective CEOs spin their plans for dealing with the tariff situation and their corporate profits. Watchful eyes will also be on this week’s PCE and labor market data. The good news is that the Q1 earnings forecast has again been raised, today to 10.9% vs 8.1 a week ago and now creeping closer to the 12.4 from January. The better news is that though 2.4 times as many S&P companies are so far reporting negative forecasts vs positive, that’s still better than the 2.6 from last year when the market was doing well.  The bad news is that the majority of economists still place recession risk this year as high. Volume came in at 17.05 billion, creeping much closer to the 19.26 average. 

DJ: 40,113.50  +20.10       NAS: 17,382.94  +216.90     S&P: 5,525.21  +40.44         4/25

DJ: 40,227.59  +114.09     NAS: 17,366.13  -16.81        S&P: 5,528.75  +3.54           4/28

Mon 4-28-25 4:21 pm S&P 500 ekes out slight gain with data, megacap earnings eyed | Reuters