Wild Week Ends on a Positive Note Fueled by Strong Jobs Report
It was another turbulent and tumultuous week for investors, but there were glimmers of sunshine and even some unexpected good news.
“Payrolls rose far more than expected in January despite surging omicron cases that seemingly sent millions of workers to the sidelines, the Labor Department reported Friday,” writes Jeff Cox of CNBC. “The stunning gain came a week after the White House warned that the numbers could be low due to the pandemic. Covid cases, however, have plunged nationally in recent weeks, with the seven-day moving average down more than 50% since peaking in mid-January, according to the CDC.”
The U.S. added 467,000 jobs in January. Wall Street economists had forecasted an uptick of 150,000 jobs.
Amazon also weighed in with good news, boosting the Nasdaq index.
“Amazon on Thursday said revenue climbed 9% in the fourth quarter and the company reported a gain of almost $12 billion from its investment in electric vehicle company Rivian,” writes Annie Palmer of CNBC. “Amazon shares popped as much as 14% in extended trading. Should the stock sustain this rally on Friday, it would be the biggest one-day gain since 2012.”
In a follow-up report, Palmer notes that Amazon Web Services “reported a revenue jump of almost 40% from a year ago to $17.8 billion, beating the $17.37 billion expected by analysts. AWS’ operating income of $5.29 billion accounted for more than 100% of Amazon’s total operating profit for the quarter.”
The news from Amazon was greeted with enthusiasm. In contract, however, Facebook seems heading into difficult territory, as the next item indicates.
Facebook Losing Daily Users
For years, Facebook has seemed unstoppable and unshakeable, especially in its uncanny ability to attract young users.
“But on Wednesday, it reported its first-ever quarterly decline of daily users globally, along with lower-than-expected ad growth that sent its stock plunging roughly 20 percent,” writes of Alex Heath The Verge. “The massive stock drop, which instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value, shows that Facebook’s corporate rebrand to Meta isn’t enough to distract investors from the problems in its core business of social media
Not only was user growth across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp essentially flat last quarter, but the main Facebook app lost 1 million daily users in North America, where it makes the most money through advertising. That drop led to an overall decrease in daily users of Facebook globally, which a company spokesperson confirmed is the first sequential decline in the company’s history.”
Alphabet Beats Estimates as Ad Revenue Grows
Google’s ad revenue keeps growing, lifting its parent company to even greater heights.
“Despite being one of the biggest onlineadvertising giants, Google’s ad business is still growing at a rapid clip. Google’s ad sales grew nearly 33% year-over-yearto $61.2 billion during the three months ending in December, and contributed to an overall better-than-expected quarter for its parent company, Alphabet,” writes Clare Duffy of CNN Business. “The company on Tuesday reported quarterly profit of $20.6 billion, or $30.69 per share, on revenue of $75.3 billion, well ahead of what Wall Street analysts had projected.”
New Software Enables Searching in English Through Foreign-Language Text and Speech
It used to be that spies had to learn foreign languages if they wanted to scan another country’s documents for potentially important information. But thanks to new software, English-speaking users at the nation’s intelligence services will be able to probe documents and speeches even if they are in another language.
“The intelligence community now has a tool that allows English-speaking users to search through foreign language text and speech for information,” writes of Nathan Strout of C4ISRNET. “The new tool was developed by Raytheon BBN Technologies in partnership with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity … Raytheon is one of four prime contractorsdeveloping solutions, including Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute.”
