18 January, 2024

Positive Q4 Retail Data Douses Hopes Of Impending Rate Cuts – She’s Got The Stocks – 18th January 2024

Investors’ optimism that the FED would be cutting interest rates was dampened this week after better-than-expected consumer spending data.

New retail data showed an increase in Americans spending in December, particularly on clothing and merchandise.

The Atlanta FED also increased its expectations of annual growth in the fourth quarter of December to 2.4 per cent (up from 2.2 per cent).

With solid signs of the economy growing, there is less need for the FED to cut interest rates, as investors had hoped.

This led to a dip in Wall Street – the Nasdaq composite slumped 88.73, or 0.6 per cent, to 14,855.62 and S&P 500 was also down by 0.6 per cent.

AIRTASKER

Airtasker continues to soar as Aussies become increasingly concerned about the cost-of-living crisis.

According to CommBank one in three Aussies say they couldn’t handle a major unexpected expense and one in two say they don’t have enough money to handle a temporary loss of income.

It is no longer that Airtasker – a marketplace where individuals can take up extra odd jobs – continues to do well.

Its share price was up by 17.39 per cent this week.

ATLASSIAN

One of Atlassian’s top executives warned other tech companies about the dangers of forcing their employees back to work.

“I think leaders are beginning to recognise how significant the erosion of trust is when they have instituted a return to the office [mandate],” said Dean in response to news that the likes of Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet were maintaining at least a partial return to the office.

“I think this is the year that executives are going to recognise that return-to-office mandates are not positively impacting productivity.”

NVIDIA

Nvidia shares reached an all-time high this week as it looks like the bubble is far from over for the semiconductor giant.

Nvidia shares have more than trebled in the last year thanks to the AI boom.

APPEN

Not all was positive this week in the world of AI. Shares in Appen fell to an all-time low this week after crashing by as much as 75 per cent in a year.

The tumbling share price can largely be attributed to Appen’s company results. Revenue for the first half of 2023 was done by 22 per cent compared to 2022.

	Open	Close	Change
Macquarie Telecom Limited (ASX: MAQ)	$69.31	$68.50	-1.17%
REA Group (ASX: REA)	$180.47	$175.39	-2.81%
Atlassian (NAS: TEAM) (USD)	$244.21	$236.97	-2.96%
Xero (ASX: XRO)	$109.80	$109.85	0.05%
Carsales.com (ASX: CAR)	$31.16	$31.52	1.16%
NEXTDC (ASX: NXT)	$13.79	$13.68	-0.80%
WiseTech Global (ASX: WTC)	$72.47	$71.66	-1.12%
Appen (ASX: APX)	$0.51	$0.45	-11.76%
Airtasker (ASX: ART)	$0.23	$0.27	17.39%
Telstra (ASX: TLS)	$3.91	$3.96	1.28%
Adobe (NAS: ADBE) (USD)	$591.03	$596.10	0.86%
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) (USD)	$264.13	$271.44	2.77%
Apple (NAS: AAPL) (USD)	$186.19	$182.68	-1.89%
Alphabet (NAS: GOOGL) (USD)	$142.28	$141.47	-0.57%
Meta (NAS: META) (USD)	$370.47	$367.46	-0.81%
Microsoft (NAS: MSFT) (USD)	$382.77	$389.47	1.75%
Amazon (NAS: AMZN) (USD)	$153.73	$151.71	-1.31%
Nvidia (NAS: NVDA) (USD)	$543.50	$560.53	3.13%
Netflix (NAS: NFLX) (USD)	$478.33	$480.33	0.42%

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