S&P 500 Logs Back-to-Back Gains | Closing Bell

A mixed day here in markets, what do you make of it? I'm really watching what's going on with the banks. I know Katie's going to be talking about some of those at length, but the KBW Bank Index down 1.9% right now. We're hearing from a lot of banks that are at the Barclays Conference, they do this each year, and it seems like they're really tempering expectations or managing expectations about what's to come when we start to hear from them in the most recent quarter in, gosh, just about a month. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what we actually hear from them and whether they're under-promising now to over-deliver. We'll get into that as well. It's interesting that we have so many risk events loaded up between now and 8.30 a.m. tomorrow morning. The debate, of course, inflation numbers, things are getting excited again, even though you think about the markets today, not too much action. Yeah, not to mention NVIDIA's Jensen Huang speaking with the Goldman Sachs' David Solomon tomorrow, and I'm sure top of mind for a lot of people is what's going on with Blackwell and the manufacturing delays that we've seen with that chip. I don't know. I think you guys are overselling it. I think you're going to get the debate, sure, but then with CPI tomorrow at 8.30, is that really going to resolve the debate of 25 or 50 that will give direction to the markets? Come on. All right. Well, we're going to find out here. And I guess investors, I mean, and maybe that's part of the problem is it's kind of like investors just had so much that they could focus on, and the question is, what do you pick and choose? A mixed day here on Wall Street as we get to closing numbers here in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lowered by more than 80 points, roughly about two-tenths of a percent. We wait for these numbers to settle, but it looks like it's going to be a down day for that index. The S&P 500, despite all the turmoil, despite all the hand-wringing, it's actually two straight days of gains, a 24-point gain on the day, excuse me, up about half a percent, the Nasdaq up about eight-tenths of a percent, the Russell 2000 actually tried to get a bid here going into the close. It looks like it's going to finish in the green. We're going to call it unchanged. It's down less than one point on the day. Well, taking a deeper look at the S&P 500, you had more stocks advance than decline. Not surprising, given that the index did move higher today, 263 stocks moving higher, 236 moving lower. You know, I was just counting in. The S&P 500 changed direction six times, at least six times today, although in the last two and a half hours, it's been on a steady upward trajectory, and that's what you see in the sector performances as well. A lot of green there, led by REITs, led by consumer discretionary companies, and led by tech. All three of those groups up at least one percent, but the weak links are pretty weak. Energy stocks off by 1.9 percent as Brent crude falls below $70 a barrel, and financials, as you guys mentioned, losing one percent on the day. All right. Well, let's take a look at some of the stocks. Remember when Tracy Alloway bought like a barrel or something and kept it in her bathtub? Yes, I do remember this. That was very cool. Who bought? Tracy Alloway. Tracy Alloway bought a lot. She bought like a small little barrel. It wasn't a full barrel, but she kept it in her bathtub. Still counts. Yeah. Is that allowed in like apartment buildings? I don't think so. I mean, it's probably pretty small. Such a New York problem, right? No oil allowed. That's in the bylaws. Hey, let's take a look at what happened to some of the gainers today. Oracle higher by 11.4 percent. They actually had a record shares after the company reported profit in booking that topped estimates. AI demand continues to boost its cloud computing business. Remember, Oracle has been focused on expanding that cloud infrastructure. They rent computer power. They compete with Amazon, Microsoft, Google. They've developed a reputation for success with Gen AI workloads. The company touted customers, including Elon Musk's XAI. And speaking of Elon Musk, Tesla, another one of the gainers today, shares finishing higher. This after Deutsche Bank resumed coverage of U.S. autos and auto tech sector. They named Tesla its top pick. They said the company is in a, quote, league of its own and represents our highest conviction secular leader, poised to reshape multiple industries across auto, energy, mobility and robotics. I want to do a fun, sweet one. What's that? To end the day. Tootsie Roll Industries. Oh. Yeah. Okay. TRUS. I always forget they're publicly traded. Yeah. Market capital. Their candy's gross. Excuse me? Sorry. What? Excuse me? Tootsie Rolls are disgusting. No. Disagree. Okay. I think the 69 boys disagree with you as well. The stock, the best performer among its peers, finishing higher today by 3.2 percent. No fundamental news I could find. Share's flat. Thank you for that. I love Tootsie Rolls. But a fun one to end on. But you don't like chocolate. It's like $2 million. It's fudge. It's real chocolate? Yeah. No, that's the point. All right. Now this all makes sense. Katie, on to you. All right. It's my turn. Let's get to the bad news. Let's get to J.P. Morgan, of course. We all know the story there. We had President Daniel Pinto come out and say that analysts are being too optimistic in projecting next year's expenses and net interest income. Of course, he was one of, it feels like several banks, Goldman included, sort of tempering the outlook here. J.P. Morgan shares finishing about 5 percent lower on the day. At one point, it was 7.5 percent, which was one of its worst days since, I think, June 2020. So finishing off those levels, but still down about 5 percent. The next one, we have to talk about Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Of course, HPE shares falling quite significantly. It's a boring reason, of course. They said yesterday that they had commenced a convertible preferred stock offering. You can see that investors clearly not too psyched about that. Hewlett-Packard shares really taking a dive there. And then I wanted to finish, of course, with Exxon. Scarlett was talking about how energy stocks were some of your worst performers today, and Exxon was no exception. You take a look at how shares finished up, down about 3.6 percent. What's the difference between fudge and chocolate? I couldn't tell you. That is a great question. Is it more condensed milk versus something else? Hang tight. Do yields. I'm going to Google this. That's a good distinction. All right. Let's go to bonds for a second. You saw a bid pretty much all across the curve. You have 2-year yield down by about 7 basis points. You had a 3-year auction that actually went pretty smoothly. The demand was pretty solid. And then tomorrow, you get $39 billion worth of tenure. And then you get a 30-year later on in the week of $22 billion. So clearly, that bond bull is still very much alive and well today. And? Fudge, according to Google. Fudge is not the same as chocolate. But it can often contain chocolate. It's made from sugar, dairy, and flavorings. And it's cooked. Was this an AI answer? It's more similar to caramel. Yes, it's AI. So it's probably wrong. Nevertheless, that's what the little internet box. I like flavorings. That's really vague and specific. Flavorings. For our purposes. But I will eat fudge, but I won't eat a tootsie roll. Just throwing that out there for a new distinction. Learning a lot about all of us. Mostly Alex. I don't like chocolate. Are we still getting earnings? We are still getting earnings. Have you ever been to a Dave & Buster's, Tim? Yeah, ticker P-L-A-Y. Earnings pulling up here on the Bloomberg Terminal. Second quarter adjusted earnings per share beats estimates. Second quarter entertainment revenue coming in above estimates at $375.7 million. Second quarter adjusted earnings per share coming in way higher than estimates at $1.12. Dave & Buster's second quarter EPS also coming in above estimates. Shares bouncing around but up 5.6. Well, 7% as we speak right now. All right. Let's get over to Petco. The ticker there is woof, of course. It's where the pet goes. Shares are moving higher right now because they reported net sales for the second quarter that meet expectations. Net sales coming in at $1.52 billion. The estimate was for $1.53 billion. But this is interesting. The adjusted loss per share in the second quarter came in at 2 cents. That is slightly better than what analysts had been looking for, about 2.3 cents. And they look forward there to the third quarter adjusted loss per share of 3 cents to 4 cents. 3.1 cents is what the estimate had been. So you add it all together and shares moving firmly higher right now. All right. Let's take a look at GameStop earnings. And, you know, when we say earnings, we kind of quote marks around it. Adjusted EPS of 4 cents. I'm not sure what that compares with. But let's look at the revenue line. Second quarter hardware and accessories net sales missing the average analyst estimate. That was about $451 million, down 24 percent versus last year. Analysts were looking for $477 million. So that's a big miss. Net sales overall down about 31 percent. Software net sales also down about 48 percent. Yeah, within the revenue line, everything is down year on year. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, I was looking through the press release to see any color. There's no color. It's just numbers and buh-bye. There is no conference call today. And this goes on. Michael Pachter over at Wedbush said that this company continues to face a, quote, near insurmountable barrier to its planned return to growth. And clearly these numbers with those declines year on year aren't helping in any. Yeah, well, planned return to growth. I mean, you have to put that in quotation marks because, I mean, what's the plan here? I mean, 31 percent drop in revenue and even that collectible side, which was actually one of the few bright spots that they had in past quarters, being that down also 18 percent here. There's just negative signs in front of everything. Yep. What are you doing, Scarlett? What am I doing? Yeah, looking at the difference between fudge and chocolate. I'm just thinking, when was the last time I was in a GameStop? I mean, I go with my kids, but, like, you just kind of look at it. The store shelves are really bare, and then you move on. Yeah. I don't know what they're set to do with this turnaround that has been years in the making that has yet to materialize. Is there not another roaring kitty tweet that can save this stock? Well, to Katie's point in the chat, she does point out that the stock is up almost 34 percent year to date. Thank you so much, Meme Stocks. Yeah, you're outperforming. If you are in a single stock portfolio, just GameStop.