The stock market fell sharply on Tuesday as new economic data renewed fears on the health of the economy, as manufacturing production showed signs of weakness. The ISM manufacturing index reported 47.2% for August, below the 47.9% estimates. This measure indicates the percentage of expanding companies, thus, anything below 50.0% is considered a contraction.
Overall, S&P 500 dropped 2.1% to 5,529, while NASDAQ contracted 3.3% to 17,136. This was the biggest daily drop for the indices since early August.
Tweet of the Day
I'm not a fan of Dell $DELL stock as profits haven't been growing consistently. Here's profits (EPS) the past 5 Q2s:
$1.92
$2.24
$1.68
$1.74
$1.89 Last qtr.So last qtr's profits declined, this is not the Dell of the 1990s.
— David Sharek (@GrowthStockGuy) August 30, 2024
Chart of the Day
Here is the one-year chart of Microsoft (MSFT) as of August 6, 2024, when the stock was at $400.
Microsoft reported modest profit growth last quarter of 10% as cloud computing continues to grow briskly. The company achieved 10% profit growth on 15% revenue growth, driven by a 21% increase in Microsoft Cloud revenue, strong Azure performance, commercial bookings, and gains in search and advertising.
Azure, Microsoft’s cloud service platform that enables users to manage cloud services such as data storage and transformation, experienced 29% sales growth. The number of Azure AI customers rose to over 60,000, nearly 60% more than the previous year, with higher average spending per customer. Microsoft had so many positive highlights in its earnings call — especially in AI — that there was too much to post here. The biggest may be its AI assistant, Copilot, which had the number of customers grow 60% quarter over quarter.
MSFT is part of our Conservative Growth Portfolio, Growth Portfolio, and Aggressive Growth Portfolio.
