Before the Bell: Wall Street Rebounded on Friday

Japan’s stock market is closed today. Prosus posts excellent results, and Alibaba jumps 5% a day ahead of its earnings.

Wall Street managed to finish Friday with solid gains. The S&P 500 rose 1%, and the Nasdaq added 0.9%. This partially offset Thursday’s sharp declines, although U.S. indices still closed the week 2% lower. Target (+4.7%), PayPal (+4.2%) and Home Depot (+3.3%) performed well on Friday, while Walmart (-1.7%), Microsoft (-1.3%) and Nvidia (-1%) lost ground. European markets ended Friday with an average loss of 1%, but the Bel20 bucked the trend and closed 0.5% higher, driven mainly by AB InBev (+3%) and Elia (+2.2%). Elsewhere in Europe, Diageo (+3.8%) and L’Oréal (+2.7%) had strong sessions, while ASML (-6.3%) and Novo Nordisk (-3%) were notable losers.

Tokyo’s stock exchange is closed today for Labor Thanksgiving Day. Hong Kong’s market is up 2.1%, recovering nearly all of Friday’s 2.4% drop. Alibaba, which reports earnings tomorrow, is up 5.4%. Baidu gained 3.7% and BYD added 3.5%. The U.S. earnings season is drawing to a close, though chipmaker Semtech and videoconferencing platform Zoom will still report after the bell tonight. In Amsterdam, technology investment group Prosus announced excellent half-year results this morning. Fagron also reported acquisitions in Poland and Hungary worth 26 million euro. Today, Belgium and Germany will release business confidence figures.

Prosus in Top Shape

Prosus underperformed for a long time on the Amsterdam stock exchange, but lately shareholders have had little reason to complain. The stock is up 48% so far this year, and since the start of last year it has gained an impressive 110%. Many Spaarvarkens members hold Prosus shares — myself included — and I’m holding on tight. Today Prosus released strong half-year results: e-commerce revenue rose 22% and operating profit jumped 70%. None of this is a surprise, because last Monday Prosus already announced that core earnings per share for the first half of its financial year (ending 30 September) would rise 20.1% to 28.5%. Oddly enough, Prosus published that guidance just a week before reporting. The reason lies in Johannesburg Stock Exchange regulations: Prosus is roughly 43% owned by South Africa’s Naspers, and Prosus accounts for nearly all of Naspers’ profit. The Johannesburg exchange requires companies to immediately disclose when they expect results to differ by at least 20% from the prior-year period. Hence the early update.

Fewer Strokes Thanks to Bayer

Bayer announced on Sunday that it is preparing global regulatory filings after positive trial results for its new stroke medication. The German pharmaceutical group enrolled 12,300 participants in the study — all of whom had previously suffered an ischemic stroke. A daily dose of 50 mg asundexian significantly reduces the risk of recurrence without increasing the risk of major bleeding. Bayer will present full results in the near future. Each year, roughly 12 million people suffer a stroke worldwide. One in five patients experiences a second stroke within five years, and these recurrent strokes tend to cause more disability and have a higher mortality rate than the first. Last year, Bayer was forced to admit that its blood thinner failed to outperform apixaban, marketed as Eliquis by Bristol-Myers Squibb in partnership with Pfizer.

Did you know…

that Wall Street will be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving? On Black Friday, trading will run for only a half-day, with markets closing at 1:00 p.m. local time.

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