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Stock Market Rise, York, NY (2026)

04/27/2022

Microsoft Posts Upbeat Q3 Results on Cloud Strength, Provides Strong Guidance

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) reported upbeat fiscal third-quarter 2022 results, topping analysts’ expectations. Strong customer commitments to the company’s cloud platform and outstanding performance of all segments acted as tailwinds. Additionally, the company provided strong guidance for the June quarter.

Following the news, shares of the tech giant jumped 4.47% in Tuesday’s extended trading session after closing 3.74% lower on the day.

Results in Detail
Microsoft reported adjusted earnings of $2.22 per share, up 14% year-over-year, and handily beat the Street’s estimates of $2.18 per share.

Additionally, revenue surged 18% to $49.4 billion and beat analysts’ expectations of $49.03 billion.

Results included the impact of unfavorable foreign exchange rate movement and the acquisition of Nuance, which closed on March 4, 2022.

Operating expenses came in at $13.4 billion, up 155 year-over-year.

Segmental Revenues
Microsoft reported Productivity and Business Processes quarterly revenue of $15.8 billion, up 17% year-over-year. Within the segment, commercial products and cloud services revenue jumped 12%, consumer products and cloud services revenue rose 11%, and LinkedIn revenue surged 34%. Notably, Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew to 58.4 million in the quarter.

Intelligent Cloud revenue stood at $19.1 billion, up 26%. Remarkably, Azure and other cloud services revenue growth was 46%. Microsoft Cloud revenue was up 32%, while commercial bookings reflected a growth of 28%.

More Personal Computing increased 11% to $14.5 billion, including a rise of 11% in Windows OEM revenue. A robust PC market, mainly in the commercial segment, drove the results.

Capital Deployment
During the third quarter, Microsoft returned $12.4 billion to shareholders, including $7.8 in the form of share repurchases and $4.6 billion in dividends.

CEO’s Comments
Sharing his thoughts, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella commented, “Going forward, digital technology will be the key input that powers the world’s economic output. Across the tech stack, we are expanding our opportunity and taking share as we help customers differentiate, build resilience, and do more with less.”

Guidance
For the Fiscal fourth quarter of 2022, the company has provided a strong segmental revenue outlook but expects the impact of foreign currency to decrease total revenue growth by around 2 points.

Productivity and Business Processes unit is expected to report revenue in the range of $16.65-$16.9 billion, while Intelligent Cloud revenue is likely to land between $21.1 billion and $21.35 billion.

Additionally, More Personal Computing unit revenue is anticipated to come in between $14.65 billion and $14.95 billion.

Operating expenses are expected in the range of $14.8 billion to $14.9 billion.

Management anticipates the Russia-Ukraine conflict to continue to impact the business in Q4, with about $110 million impacts on revenue and minimum impact on operating expenses.

Wall Street’s Take
Shares have rallied 4% over the past year, while Wall Street analysts are still bullish about the stock. The Strong Buy consensus rating boasts 18 unanimous Buys. Looking ahead, the average Microsoft price target stands at $371.13, putting the upside potential at 37.34% from current levels.

Website Traffic
TipRanks’ Website Traffic Tool, which uses data from SEMrush Holdings (SEMR), offered insight into Microsoft’s performance in the March quarter.

Supporting the upbeat March quarter results, the website traffic tool showed an uptrend in the website traffic. According to the tool, microsoft.com recorded a 20.2% year-over-year increase in global estimated visits in Fiscal Q3 2022.

The predictions that were based on TipRanks’ website visits data turned out to be correct, with Microsoft reporting strong revenues in the quarter.

04/25/2022

4.25 Comments
US stocks
U.S. stocks fell sharply across the board on Friday, with the Dow down 2.82%, the Nasdaq down 2.55%, and the S&P 500 down 2.77%.
Federal Reserve Chairman Powell's hawkish speech hinted at a 50 basis point rate hike in the future. The next day, investors further bet that the Fed would raise interest rates aggressively; some health care and retail companies generally lowered their performance expectations for this year, triggering the market's slowdown in corporate earnings 's concerns.
Under the superposition of multiple factors, pessimism shrouded the market, triggering a wave of selling, and the three major U.S. stock indexes all suffered heavy losses.
This year, we have to adapt to external changes, and the decline of US stocks will become the norm.
Macron won the general election last night and was re-elected as French president.

A shares
Big A fell badly today, and the 3000-point defense battle was completely defeated. In April 14 years ago, we were also in the 3,000-point defense battle. . .
Today is another record-breaking day. More than 4,600 stocks fell. Only 148 stocks in the two cities closed in red, 661 stocks fell by the limit, and the median decline of individual stocks exceeded 7%. . .

As of the close, the Shanghai Composite Index closed at 2,928.51 points, down 5.13%; the Shenzhen Component Index closed at 10,379.28 points, down 6.08%, and the ChiNext Index closed at 2,169 points, down 5.56%.
The total turnover of the two cities was 896.9 billion yuan, a significant increase of 143.6 billion yuan compared with the previous trading day. Panic orders, passive lightening orders, and liquidation orders were panic, crowded, and sold. . .

Hong Kong stocks
Hong Kong stocks also followed the sharp sell-off today. As of 3:00 pm, the Hang Seng Index plunged 3.98%, the Hang Seng Technology Index plunged 5.26%, and the southbound capital saw a small net inflow of 516 million yuan.

Northbound funds
The total net sales of foreign capital was 4.397 billion yuan throughout the day, of which the net sales of Shanghai Stock Connect was 4.847 billion yuan, and the net purchase of Shenzhen Stock Connect was 450 million yuan.
The devaluation of the renminbi continued, and the offshore renminbi fell below the 6.59 mark against the US dollar, just one step away from 6.6.

plate performance
The industry sector has been wiped out, and the 3% decline in the big financial sector is already the least.

There are 17 industry sectors with a drop of more than 7%, which is simply unbearable.

Comment
The external targets are still continuing, and the exchange rate has fallen rapidly; the internal situation has not stopped, and the epidemic has not improved significantly; the listed companies have frequent thunderstorms, such as Ningwang, Xinhua, Hengrui, Shuijingfang, Sany, Lens, and China Merchants Bank. . .
As I said before, confidence has collapsed and the market has fallen into extreme pessimism.
Every day is all kinds of beatings, all kinds of abuse, and no one helps.
Big A is like an unattended child, pitiful and helpless. . .

Action suggestion
Or the previous point of view, don't act rashly, it is important to keep the principal. If you don't see the bottom of the market, you will never make a move.
It's getting tougher every year, take care everyone

04/25/2022

High Profitability
In the last 12 months, Williams-Sonoma has recorded ~$1.15 billion in free cash flow, making it profitable by our definition. This means that the company doesn’t have to rely on equity raises to continue funding its growth.

More importantly, its free cash flow has been trending up in recent years, as it was just $341.1 million in the fiscal year ended January 2016. To us, this means that the company’s free cash flows are reasonably predictable.

Dividends, Buybacks, and Valuation
Williams-Sonoma is known for its dividend growth and buybacks. Currently, its dividend yield is 2.3%, which is not bad considering that it has room for quick growth. The dividend increased 10% last month, which is respectable.

Both its five and 10-year dividend CAGR come in at a bit above 13%. To put that into perspective, 10 years ago, its dividend was $0.88 per share; now, it is $3.12. Its payout ratio of 17% suggests that the dividend is well covered and can grow without any issues.

The company also doesn’t have any interest-bearing debt and has a cash pile of $850.3 million. With a market cap of about $9.7 billion, its cash position is about 8.8% of its market cap.

WSM can use its cash combined with its high free cash flow to buy back a large portion of its shares. In fact, that is exactly what it plans to do. Last month, WSM authorized $1.5 billion in buybacks. If the company ends up buying back all those shares at an average price near its current price of ~$135, then this would equate to around 15.5% of its market cap.

Throw in the dividend, and you have high return potential. Lastly, earnings are expected to grow over the next few years, and with an estimated forward EPS of $15.28, this implies a forward P/E multiple of ~8.8, which we believe is cheap.

Risks
To measure Williams-Sonoma’s risk, we can check whether financial leverage is an issue. We do this by comparing its debt-to-free cash flow. Currently, this number stands at 1.1 (if you include lease liabilities as debt). In addition, when looking at historical trends, its debt-to-free cash flow ratio has been trending down.

Overall, we don’t believe that debt is currently a material risk for the company because it has paid off all its interest-bearing debt in the past few years and has historically been responsible when it comes to debt.

However, there are other risks associated with Williams-Sonoma. According to Tipranks’ Risk Analysis, the company has disclosed 43 risks in its most recent earnings report. The highest amount of risk came from the Finance & Corporate category.

Wall Street’s Take
Turning to Wall Street, WSM has a Hold consensus rating. This is based on six Buys, five Holds, and four Sell ratings assigned in the past three months. The average Williams-Sonoma price forecast of $178 implies 31.7% upside potential.

Analyst price targets range from a low of $132 per share to a high of $225 per share.

Conclusion
Williams-Sonoma has been selling off lately due to recession and inflation fears. Perhaps the market doesn’t believe that it can sustain its earnings and margins in an inflationary or recessionary environment.

Although this selling may continue in the short term, we believe the long-term picture is better, as WSM has a solid history of growth, profitability, and good returns due to its competitive advantages. At the current low valuation, we are bullish on WSM stock.

04/25/2022

If you're not planning to leave the stock market within the next three years and are determined to make stock trading a second career, then you must read these 10 iron laws. They're all bread and butter.
One: This is a common problem for retail investors all over the world. If you lose money, you sell it immediately. You don't look at trend or volume.
The result is unlimited losses and limited profits. It needs to be reversed. Take it if you make a profit, and cut it if you lose a little. My take profit and stop loss rule is 15% profit and profit.
Take profit if profit falls by 10%. If it keeps going up, keep holding it and let the profits run. Stop loss if the buy falls and the loss exceeds 5% of the principal. If you can guarantee profit every time
10%, stop loss 5%, and then operate 100 times, so even if your winning rate is only 50%, your profit can reach 800%, is it difficult? The difficulty lies in human greed and fear
Fear, the unity of knowledge and action.
Two: I have always felt that the indicator of volume is very important. If you learn this, you will crush 80% of trading players. The volume ratio is less than 0.5, and the shrinkage is obvious. The shrinking volume can reach a new high, indicating that the main force is controlled at a high level, which can rule out the possibility of the main force shipping. If it happens to be in the ascending channel, the probability of eating meat is extremely high.
If the daily limit and volume ratio of the stock is less than 1, it means that there is still a lot of room for growth, and the probability of another daily limit is extremely high. Individual stocks are rarely bought.
Three: It is best to hold 2 to 3 stocks. Pain point of retail investors: You will not be short, and the weak are eager to cover their positions. Less principal, more inventory. Most of them are losses. At this time, the most important thing is to reduce holdings. If the trend breaks (eg below the 20-day moving average), sell first. Even in a bull market, my holdings have never exceeded 4.
Four: Don't be in a hurry when you get up in the morning. In the afternoon, there is usually a connecting flight. If there is a sharp rise late in the session, you need to lighten your positions. The probability of a callback the next day is high. The shrinkage will rise and rise again, the shrinkage will fall, and it will continue to fall.
Falling, the high volume has stagnated, the head has been found, the shrinking volume has stopped falling, the bottom has been found, the huge volume has risen sharply, and it will inevitably pull back. The success rate is as high as 85%.
Five: Trend is king, follow the trend. Once the trend is formed, no analysis is required, you must follow it, follow the capital, don't guess, don't predict, don't make assumptions, if you can't judge the trend, you only look at the moving average. The so-called moving average is to divide the quotation into long and short positions. Up, bears are state. Looking at the 5-day moving average in the short term. If the volume breaks, you follow. If the medium to long term trend is trending, you should look at the 20-day moving average.
6: Divergent buying, unanimous selling, divergences produce a premium. This sentence is very classic. My experience is that when a strong stock diverges, it's a buy point. The performance of divergence is the characteristics of continuous speculation and heavy volume of the stock, indicating that the gap between the long and short sides of the stock is relatively large. After the divergence, the follow-up continued to rise. That's a selling point when all investors feel like they can keep going up. Here I summarize a few key points for making handprint inverse treasures:
1. Connect the board, the popularity is high enough, and the market attention is high
2. The hand bank must be killed fiercely, the market price difference should be large enough, and the market's expectation of its reversal should not be too high
3. Two conditions must be met in the process of polysilver selling: changing hands and feet. B. The change in chips should be concentrated at a relatively low level on the day of selling, otherwise it will lead to continuous selling pressure and reverse the market the next day when it reaches a high level.
4. The next day saw a huge sell-off, which means the expected reversal will be flat or higher than expected.
5. From the first cloudy day, the adjustment cannot exceed 3 trading days, otherwise the popularity will gradually dissipate
If the above five conditions are met, the winning rate of the stock will be much higher.
Seven: After making a lot of money, you must learn to short. Retail investors tend to be proud

04/24/2022

Apple Stock Offers a Good Hiding Place in a Rocky Stock Market, Says Deutsche Bank

In less than a week — Thursday, April 28, after close of trading — tech leader Apple (AAPL) is due to report its fiscal Q2 2022 financial results. Yes, it’s Q1 earnings season right now. But as in so many other things, Apple is a bit ahead of the times. For Apple, the calendar has already flipped to fiscal Q2.

As earnings day gets closer, investors are having some early jitters. Since the start of the month, Apple stock is down 5% — but not to worry, says Deutsche Bank analyst Sidney Ho. “While concerns about the China smartphone market and manufacturing shutdowns in China have increased recently,” Apple stocks remains “a good hiding place in this volatile market.” And next week’s earnings are probably going to turn out just fine.

Sure, on the one hand, the rapid spread of Omicron coronavirus in China has caused city-wide shutdowns and shuttered key factories, which could snarl supply chains and delay delivery of certain Apple products to market. iPhone supply chains in particular, however, which account for the majority of Apple’s profits, should be in pretty good shape. And to the extent that demand for iPhones still outstrips supply, that will be good news for both sales and pricing power.

Demand, after all, still looks good for Apple products. In a typical year, Ho notes that Apple’s sales fall as much as 30% sequentially between fiscal Q1 and fiscal Q2, but he believes results will be at least a little “better” than that this year — about a 28% sequential decline for iPhone revenues, and only a 24% decline for revenues overall. As the analyst explains, demand for high end smartphones in particular (and iPhones are considered very high end) “will hold up better than lower-priced options,” leading to the better-than-historical result in fiscal Q2.

Where Ho sees more reasons to worry is in fiscal Q3 (i.e. everyone else’s calendar Q2). Covid-related shutdowns in China will affect supply chains more and more the longer shutdowns drag on. While again, Ho sees Apple working effectively to insulate its marquee franchise from supply shocks, he worries that “outside iPhone, supply chain will likely remain a problem,” perhaps resulting in certain MacBook model deliveries being held up for as long as six to eight weeks.

That being said, the more immediate Q2 numbers should look pretty good next week. Ho forecasts sales of about 60 million iPhones in fiscal Q2, leading to $51 billion in iPhone revenue — up 7% year over year. Overall revenues should be $96 billion — also up 7% — with earnings per share ahead of Street estimates at $1.46.

What’s more, fiscal Q3 should be even stronger for Apple. Looking out an additional three months, Ho forecasts that Apple will sell 53 million iPhones next quarter, leading to iPhone revenue growth of 11% year over year. Overall sales growth should be 12% year over year — $91 billion — with earnings of $1.37 per share — both of which numbers are ahead of Wall Street consensus.

With growth trends intact, Ho wraps up with a reiteration of his “buy” call on Apple, and a $210 price target for Apple stock. This figure implies ~29% upside from current levels.

Unsurprisingly, Apple stock tends to attract a lot of attention — the stock has 29 recent analyst reviews on record, and they include 23 Buys against 6 Holds to give the company its Strong Buy consensus rating. The shares have an average price target of $193.11, indicating room for ~19% growth from the current price of $163.21.

04/24/2022

12 Iron Rules for Exiting Trading!

Although the length is short, the gold content is very large, and it is recommended to save it for collection.

In stock trading, you must first learn to avoid risks and put yourself in a favorable position, which will determine whether you succeed or fail. To grasp the relationship between the principal, period, position and price, and to achieve the conditions for taking profit and exiting, we must resolutely give up. No one can leave the field at the top every time, just eat the fish and eat the fat part in the middle. Today, I will share the exiting skills I have practiced for many years with the cow friends!

1. The stock price has released a large amount, and the short-term increase is more than 60%. At this time, the main force comes to the profit space, and it is likely to ship in heavy volume, leaving the market first.

2. When the stock is in an upward trend, it suddenly closes a long upper shadow at a high level, indicating that the bulls are weak and the bears have the advantage, which is a sign of peaking.

3. After the stock has risen for a period of time, it has fluctuated sideways at a high level, and the volume is heavy. You can wait and see first. It is relatively safe to shrink the volume.

4. The stock price has not changed much, but the trading volume has released a huge amount, which is a typical symptom of stagnation. If there is a divergence of volume and price, the market outlook is likely to see a correction, and you can choose to take profit and leave the market.

5. When observing the flow of stock price and amount, it is found that the main force continues to have a large net outflow. Pay special attention to the main force fleeing, and there may be changes in the future.

6. The stock suddenly crosses the important support average with heavy volume. You should take profit and stay on the sidelines. If the subsequent rebound does not stand firm on the moving average, you don’t need to pay attention, indicating that the shape has reversed.

7. The stock suddenly rose rapidly during the session. After the market closed, there was good news in the market, indicating that the main force digested the positive events in advance. At this time, you should pay attention to the position of the increase. It is relatively safe at a low level, and it appears at a high level. Be careful to take advantage of the main force to ship the next day.

8. When the leading stocks of the sector held by you have a signal of high stagnation, generally at this time, the high level of the sector is about to peak. Considering the linkage effect within the sector, choose an opportunity to take profit and leave the market.

9. When a certain sector rises collectively, but individual stocks do not rise, but instead trade sideways or pull back, don’t think about picking up bargains and bottom-hunting, and observe whether there are any problems with its fundamentals and whether the company’s performance has changed.

10. When the overall trend of a certain sector is not good, the industry cycle is in a downturn range, and the performance of finishing is declining. At this time, don’t think about how much profit you can make from it.

11. When the stock held by the company announces the financial report, the company's performance declines sharply, or even suffers a serious loss, which is far lower than the previous expectation, and it is necessary to leave the market decisively. When the fundamentals change, it is difficult to have a qualitative change in the short term.

12. When the water is full, it overflows, and when the moon is full, it loses. When the stock price keeps hitting new record highs and the market is full of fiery noises, instead, calm down, pay attention to the extremes of things, pay attention to the signal of peaking at a high level, and you can choose to gradually reduce positions and take profits.

The above is my operating experience and key points of leaving the field, and everyone can seriously comprehend it. In stocks, no one can eat all of them again and again. Control greed to avoid profit-taking and be safe. Under the premise of controlling risks, small profits will create big profits again and again, so don't worry about gains and losses when leaving the game. A good attitude is the premise of winning.

If it feels helpful to you, you might as well stay and make a friend. Thank you for your likes and attention, and I wish everyone a long profit in the stock!

Stock Market Rise

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