Before the bell: at ease

In Hong Kong, investors are finally taking some profits. Artificial intelligence is proving more popular than ever, unlike Tesla’s cars.

On Wall Street, the indices ended yesterday unchanged. Among individual stocks, we did get big swings. Nike lost 6.8% after suspending its forecasts. Tesla fell 3.5% after disappointing sales figures. On the positive side, UnitedHealth Group (+1.5%) and Salesforce (+3.2%) stood out. In Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50 (+0.2%) posted small gains. In Amsterdam, Prosus (+3%) teetered on gains in Hong Kong. ASML (+2.1%) also recovered somewhat. Adidas (+1.9%) benefited from the weakness of its U.S. rival, and TotalEnergies (+2.2%) and Shell (+1.7%) climbed as turmoil in the Middle East could also send the price of black gold higher again. For the same reason, Lufthansa (-4.5%) and Air France-KLM (-5.5%) lost ground.

Today, some gains are finally being taken in Hong Kong (-2.3%), although the loss is limited, compared to the hefty gains of the past few days. In Japan, the Topix recovers 1.2%. Today, the PMI index of the service sector in the eurozone is published. That indicator measures sentiment among purchasing executives. In the US, we get the same publication of the ISM services sector as well as the weekly unemployment benefit claims figures. At 1 p.m. Belgian time, U.S. brewer Constellation Brands publishes quarterly results.

AI is paid dearly 

OpenAI has again raised $6.6 billion. Although the company is not publicly traded, it is now valued at $157 billion based on the price of the new shares. In the past, Microsoft in particular has been a generous sponsor of OpenAI. The software company already invested $13 billion and brought in another $750 million with the new capital round. The capital increase should make OpenAI a market leader in its sector. There already appears to be no shortage of money and confidence. After Elon Musk’s SpaceX and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, OpenAI is in the top three start-ups that have raised the most money from venture capitalists.   

Tesla disappoints

Last quarter, Tesla sold 462,890 cars. After a downturn that lasted two quarters, the U.S. electric vehicle manufacturer thus regained growth, as the figure is 6.4% higher than that of the same quarter last year. Analysts on average had counted on 469,828 cars sold. So the final figure turns out to be a setback after all. Hence, Tesla went down 3.5% on the stock market. Elon Musk claims that Tesla will sell more cars this year than the 1.8 million vehicles the company sold last year. But analysts now find that forecast implausible because that would require the company to post a record quarter in the coming months. That scenario doesn’t seem realistic.

Did you know that…

Martin Schroeder (93) passed away yesterday? The Dutch aviation pioneer founded the company in 1958 that would eventually become known as Martinair. Back in 1968, KLM took a stake in the Netherlands’ second airline before taking over the company outright in 2008.

This article was translated from Dutch and was originally published on Spaarvarkens.be.