By the end of the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 164 points, giving back gains from earlier this week and then some.
“Beating the last quarter’s earnings estimates is one thing, but the outlook for the year and beyond is ultimately more important,” said analyst Christopher Crooks of Tower Bridge Advisors.
The biggest economic news of the week was the fact that real gross domestic product notched a 6.4% increase last quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, only slightly below what many analysts had predicted.
The GDP report included other nuggets of good news, including that business investment increased nearly 10% last quarter and final sales to domestic purchasers — a metric that gauges GDP without including net exports or inventory investment, and which some experts see as a good barometer for economic strength — expanded 9.2%.
“Looking ahead, we foresee the U.S.
Other analysts, like those at the Dutch multinational finance firm ING Group, now predict the trend in GDP growth will outpace original expectations before Covid-19 struck.
Unemployment data also keeps pointing in the right direction, with 553,000 initial claims filed the week ending April 24 compared with 566,000 claims the previous week.
Some of the revenues were due to the company’s sale of bitcoin, which Telsa — and CEO Elon Musk — announced it purchased earlier in the year.
Apple posted a whopping 54% year-over-year increase in its revenue, from $58.3 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2020 to $89.5 billion last quarter.
On Friday, Amazon reported that it more than tripled its profits last quarter, posting $8.1 billion in net income last quarter compared with $2.5 billion in the first quarter of 2020.
For Microsoft, whose third quarter just ended, things were nearly as rosy, with revenue increasing 19% year over year while its net income rose 44%.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also beat most analyst expectations when it showed a 34% increase in its revenue, from $41 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2020 to $55 billion last quarter.