The stock market recovered on Thursday after a volatile session driven by the wait for the Federal Reserve’s policy decision. The central bank’s Chair Jerome Powell mentioned that it is unlikely to make a rate hike.
Investors now looked ahead to more corporate earnings and a key jobs report later this week.
Overall, S&P 500 grew 0.9% to 5,064, while NASDAQ increased 1.5% to 15,841.
Tweet of the Day
That $META earnings call was an absolute disaster. Zuck tried to convince his investors that AI is the future, when there's no real clear path to how it makes profit.
Then he tried to tie it into the metaverse.
At that point I bet a lot of people got PTSD, because the selling…
— Markets & Mayhem (@Mayhem4Markets) April 24, 2024
Chart of the Day
Here is the ten-year chart of Factset Research (FDS) as of April 2, 2024, when the stock was at $440.
Factset Research is seeing headwinds across all firm types due to cost cutting and layoffs. Still, profits grew a respectable 11% last quarter on a 6% increase in sales. There were also slightly fewer users from the prior quarter (down 605 to 26,478) because of UBS’ purchase of Credit Suisse. Client count, however, grew by 75 last quarter to 8020.
Factset Research is investing in Generative AI to help clients find new ideas and save money. It unveiled Transcript Assistant, a Generative AI-powered chatbot aimed at accelerating research and analysis of earnings call transcripts, as well as enhancing investment research capabilities. Furthermore, FactSet Mercury is a conversational way to get answers from documents and data sets.
FDS is part of the Conservative Stock Portfolio. This is a fabulous buy-and-hold stock.
