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The initial version of this story had incorrect price changes for 2023. It is now updated with information as of the market close on Jan. 31.
Investors staged a January rally, with solid gains for the S&P 500 and an even better showing for technology stocks that led the dismal downward action in 2022.
This…
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The numbers: U.S. pending-home sales rose 2.5% in December, reversing a six-month losing streak, according to the monthly index released Friday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Pending home sales were down for six months in a row, as the U.S. Federal Reserve increased interest rates and mortgage rates took off.
Pending-home sales beat analyst expectations. Analysts polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast the pending home sales index to drop by 1%.
Contract signings rose in the South and the West.
Pending home sales reflect transactions where the contract has been signed for an existing-home sale, but the sale has not yet closed.
Economists view it as an indicator for the direction of existing-home sales in subsequent months.
Mortgage application activity hints at the housing market’s further recovery. Mortgage demand rose in the latest week.
Key details: Compared with a year earlier, transactions were down by 33.8%.
On a monthly basis, pending sales rose in the South and the West. Sales dropped in the Northeast and Midwest.
Pending home sales fell the most since last December in the West, by 37.5%.
Big picture: A dip in rates has boosted demand for mortgages. Buyers are coming back to the market, and the housing market is slowly recovering. But inventory remains low, as sellers hold out. Many are looking to the spring to see if sellers are motivated to list their homes.
What the realtors said: “This recent low point in home sales activity is likely over,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said. “Mortgage rates are the dominant factor driving home sales, and recent declines in rates are clearly helping to stabilize the market.”
Yun expects mortgage rates to hover between the 5.5% and 6.5% range.
He also expects the South to outperform in terms of sales, since the job market is stronger in the region.
What they’re saying: “Home sales have now largely adjusted to the collapse in demand since late 2021. … [but] a sustained recovery likely remains a long way off,” Kieran Clancy, senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote in a note.
“The downturn in sales is coming to an end, but the decline in home prices is only just getting underway,” he added. He expects home prices to fall 15% over the next year.
Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
and the S&P 500
SPX,
were mixed in early trading on Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
rose above 3.5%.
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Plantd’s proprietary low carbon-emissions production technology transforms fast-growing perennial grass into durable home construction products.
Press Release
–
Jan 26, 2023
DURHAM, N.C., January 26, 2023 (Newswire.com)
–
Revolutionary sustainable building materials company Plantd is making waves in the construction industry with the announcement of its $10 million Series A funding round. Led by American Family Ventures, the funding solidifies Plantd’s position as a pioneer in carbon-negative building materials.
“We are thrilled to back this exceptional and visionary team,” said Kyle Beatty, Managing Director at American Family Ventures. “Plantd is creating fundamentally better construction materials that are cost-effective and truly carbon negative. We have been impressed by how they have reinvented every step of the production process from first principles, all the way from input material to logistics.”
Plantd’s production team is led by co-founders and engineers Huade Tan and Nathan Silvernail, who worked together for years at SpaceX designing and building key systems and components of the Dragon cargo and crew spacecraft. Together with co-founder and CEO Josh Dorfman, a serial entrepreneur and longtime sustainability leader, Plantd is redefining the value chain for engineered building materials.
Plantd’s proprietary low carbon-emissions production technology transforms fast-growing perennial grass into durable, carbon-negative building materials that outperform competitive products on key attributes, including strength and moisture resistance.
Starting with structural panel products for walls and roofs, Plantd will fabricate building materials that are a direct substitute for traditional home construction products and require no alternative installation techniques. By cultivating fast-growing perennial grass instead of cutting down trees and pioneering novel production technology to minimize carbon emissions, Plantd Structural Panels™ retain 80% of the atmospheric carbon dioxide captured in the field, which is then locked away inside the walls and roofs of new homes.
“We can’t move quickly enough to solve climate change unless we develop profitable methods to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” said Dorfman. “We’re going to change an industry by offering builders a better product at the same price and, in the process, scale a business that can help save the planet.”
Building with Plantd materials enables home builders to offer their customers homes that are affordable, durable, and sustainable. And by sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide within structural frames, homes built with Plantd materials will play a key role in solving climate change.
Plantd will use this round of funding to establish their agriculture supply chain and build the first-of-its-kind, modular automated continuous press for engineered building materials. The company is currently working with the nation’s largest builders and architects to integrate these materials into their projects and quickly make them a standard in the industry.
Plantd’s ultimate vision is to build the factory of the future, ensuring that new homes and buildings contribute to reversing the effects of climate change.
Learn more about Plantd by visiting https://www.plantdmaterials.com/ and discover how they are shaping the future of the construction industry and the planet.
Source: Plantd
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These are tricky times in the stock market, so it pays to look to the best stock-fund managers for guidance on how to behave now. Veteran value investor Bill Nygren belongs in this camp, because the Oakmark Fund OAKMX he co-manages consistently and substantially outperforms its peers.
That isn’t easy, considering how many fund managers fail to do so. Nygren’s fund beats its Morningstar large-cap value index and category by more than four percentage points annualized over the past three years. It also outperforms at five and…
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The numbers: U.S. existing-home sales fell 1.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million in December, the National Association of Realtors said Friday.
This is the 11th straight monthly decline in existing-home sales. The losing streak is the longest since NAR began tracking sales in 1999.
Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal were expecting existing-home sales to drop to 3.95 million.
The level of sales activity was lowest since November 2010, in the midst of the foreclosure crisis in America.
Compared with December 2021, home sales were down 34%.
Total sales of existing homes in 2022 were down 17.8% from the previous year. Last year, 5.03 million existing homes were sold, which is the lowest level since 2014.
The last time existing home sales dropped by this magnitude was in 2008.
Key details: The median price for an existing home fell to $366,900 in December, from $370,700 in November.
The number of homes on the market fell 13.4% to 970,000 units in December.
Expressed in terms of the months-supply metric, there was a 2.9-month supply of homes for sale in December, down from the previous month. Before the pandemic, a four- or five-month supply was more the norm.
Homes remained on the market for 26 days on average, up from 24 days in November. Pre-pandemic, the average time for homes to remain on the market was a month.
Sales of existing homes mostly fell across the country, led by the South, which saw a 2.2% drop. Sales were unchanged in the West.
All-cash transactions made up 28% of all transactions. About 31% of homes were sold to first-time home buyers, up from the previous month.
Big picture: Mortgage rates have moved lower, and many buyers are coming back to the real-estate market.
A small dip in rates prompted a 28% surge in mortgage demand earlier this week.
So with rates continuing to move downwards, sales may likely rebound in the next few months, breaking an 11-month losing streak.
But the market still has to figure out inventory, since there are so few homes for sale on the market.
What the realtors said: “We really need to begin to address this supply issue,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors said.
Yun said that overall, homeowners have enjoyed more in home price appreciation versus their 401k performance in the stock market.
What are they saying? Even though sales dropped considerably, “this result was somewhat better than expected,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont, wrote in a note.
And as rates move lower, that will “help to boost demand for homes generally,” Stanley added, “but it will also lessen the impact of homeowners being ‘trapped’ in their current locations.”
Market reaction: Stocks were up in early trading on Friday. The yield on the 10-year note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
rose above 3.45%.
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European Union officials were working Wednesday to coordinate a response to China’s current surge of COVID cases and were likely to agree on travel restrictions that may upset both Beijing and airlines.
The Chinese government has already slammed the countries that have imposed a COVID test requirement on passengers from China and has threatened countermeasures if more are introduced, the Associated Press reported.
EU Commission spokesman Tim McPhie said Wednesday that most EU nations are in favor of testing prior to departure and are seeking an official position later in the day.
There are concerns that China’s wave may allow for new, potentially more evasive and risky variants of the coronavirus to emerge, although so far, data are showing the variants circulating in China are already in Europe.
See also: Isolated and humiliated, Russia is biggest geopolitical threat of 2023: Eurasia Group
On Wednesday the International Air Transport Association, which represents some 300 airlines worldwide, lent its powerful voice to the protests.
“It is extremely disappointing to see this knee-jerk reinstatement of measures that have proven ineffective over the last three years,” said IATA Director General Willie Walsh.
“Research undertaken around the arrival of the omicron variant concluded that putting barriers in the way of travel made no difference to the peak spread of infections. At most, restrictions delayed that peak by a few days,” Walsh said.
EU nations are also expected to agree to test wastewater from planes flying in from China to determine whether it contains variants that are not yet prevalent in Europe.
In the U.S., the seven-day average for new COVID cases has continued to fall and stood at 60,417 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker. That’s down 10% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 on Christmas Eve.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 8% to 44,504. The average for deaths was 310, down 24% from two weeks ago.
The New York Times tracker notes there is reason to believe current case and death counts could be artificially low, as the people who track those numbers take time off around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Hospitalization data are not typically affected by holiday reporting breaks.
The number of patients with COVID in intensive-care units rose 11% in two weeks, to 5,350. Meanwhile, the test-positivity rate climbed to 16% and has increased by 25% over the past two weeks. Higher test-positivity rates suggest many new COVID cases are not being counted, as results of at-home testing may not be reported to case trackers.
Overall, cases are currently rising in 17 states, led by Mississippi, where they have climbed 78% from two weeks ago. Measured on a per-capita basis, New Jersey and New York are faring the worst, along with several southern states, including Virginia, Mississippi and South Carolina.
Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began
Other COVID-19 news you should know about:
• Shares of Lucira Health Inc.
LHDX,
more than quadrupled Tuesday after it submitted an application for emergency-use authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for over-the-counter use of a molecular COVID-19 and flu test, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The test was granted emergency-use authorization for point-of-care use in a healthcare setting in November. The company now “intends to make the test broadly available to consumers both online as well as in pharmacies.”
• Salesforce Inc.
CRM,
has become the latest big tech player to say it hired too aggressively during the COVID pandemic; it is now planning to lay off about 10% of its workforce, MarketWatch’s Emily Bary reported. The company will also exit some real estate and cut back on office space, it disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The plan is aimed at reducing operating costs, boosting operating margins and driving “profitable growth.” “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that,” the company’s co-chief executive, Marc Benioff, said in a letter to employees that was also filed with the SEC. The company had 73,541 employees as of Jan. 31, 2022, according to its last annual filing with the SEC.
Read: Here are the companies in the layoffs spotlight; Salesforce joins Intel, Google, HP, Amazon, Cisco
• Pfizer Inc.
PFE,
has gone from being a COVID darling to a “show-me” launch story, according to Bank of America analysts, who downgraded the stock to neutral from buy on Wednesday, citing declining COVID revenues and uncertainty about how new products will perform. Analysts are expecting revenue from Pfizer’s COVID vaccine Comirnaty and its antiviral Paxlovid to decline by about $32 billion from 2022, wider than the consensus number of a decline of $25 billion. “While new launches can partially address the $17 billion LOE (loss of exclusivity) hole in 2025 to 2030, longer term growth is unclear,” the analysts wrote in a note to clients.
Here’s what the numbers say:
The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 666.8 million on Tuesday, while the death toll rose above 6.69 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. leads the world with 100.8 million cases and 1,094,010 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 229.1 million people living in the U.S., equal to 69% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 47 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 15.1% of the overall population.
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This article is an excerpt from “Here Are Barron’s 10 Top Stocks for the New Year,” published on Dec. 16, 2022. To see the full list, click here.
With home builder
Toll Brothers
‘ stock down 30% this year, it might look like the roof is caving in. But that’s probably not the case. Yes, mortgage rates have doubled, but Toll (ticker: TOL), the top luxury home builder, is more insulated than its peers, due to the affluent buyers of its homes, which sell for an average of about $1 million. About 20% of Toll buyers pay cash, and many are selling homes for a lot more than they paid for them.
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These reports, excerpted and edited by Barron’s, were issued recently by investment and research firms. The reports are a sampling of analysts’ thinking; they should not be considered the views or recommendations of Barron’s. Some of the reports’ issuers have provided, or hope to provide, investment-banking or other services to the companies being analyzed.
Advanced Micro Devices AMD-Nasdaq
Buy (four stars out of five) • Price $64.52 on Dec. 23
by CFRA
Our Buy recommendation reflects our expectation for significant share gains on the central-processing-unit data-center side from the ramp-up of AMD’s next-generation EPYC processor, greater momentum for AMD’s graphics processing units, and our expectation for balance sheet improvement.
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This has been the year of reckoning for Big Tech stocks — even those of companies that have continued to grow sales by double digits.
Below is a list of the 20 stocks in the S&P 500
SPX,
that have declined the most in 2022.
First, here’s how the 11 sectors of the benchmark index have performed this year:
| S&P 500 sector | 2022 price change | Forward P/E | Forward P/E as of Dec. 31, 2021 |
| Energy | 57.8% | 9.6 | 11.1 |
| Utilities | -0.5% | 18.8 | 20.4 |
| Consumer Staples | -2.7% | 20.9 | 21.8 |
| Healthcare | -3.2% | 17.4 | 17.2 |
| Industrials | -6.7% | 18.0 | 20.8 |
| Financials | -12.1% | 11.7 | 14.6 |
| Materials | -13.4% | 15.6 | 16.6 |
| Real Estate | -27.7% | 16.2 | 24.2 |
| Information Technology | -28.8% | 19.6 | 28.1 |
| Consumer Discretionary | -37.4% | 20.7 | 33.2 |
| Communication Services | -40.4% | 14.0 | 20.8 |
| S&P 500 | -19.2% | 16.5 | 21.4 |
| Source: FactSet | |||
The energy sector has been the only one to show a gain in 2022, and it has been a whopper, even as West Texas Intermediate crude oil
CL.1,
has given up most of its gains from earlier in the year. Here’s why investors are still confident in the supply/demand setup for oil and energy stocks.
Looking at the worst-performing sectors, you might wonder why the consumer discretionary and communication services sectors have fared worse than information-technology, the core tech sector. One reason is that S&P Dow Jones Indices can surprise investors with its sector choices. The consumer discretionary sector includes Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
and Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
which has fallen nearly 50% this year. The communications sector includes Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
along with Match Group Inc.
MTCH,
which is down 69% for 2022, and Netflix Inc.
NFLX,
which is down 52% this year.
There have been many reasons easy to cite for Big Tech’s decline, such as a questionable change in strategy for Facebook’s holding company, Meta, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put so much of the company’s resources into developing a new world that most people don’t wish to enter, at least yet. Meta’s shares were down 64% for 2022 through Dec. 29.
You might also blame the Twitter-related antics and sales of Tesla shares by CEO Elon Musk for the 65% decline in the electric-vehicle maker’s stock this year. But Tesla had a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 120.3 at the end of 2021, while the S&P 500
SPX,
traded for 21.4 times its weighted forward earnings estimate, according to FactSet. Those P/E ratios have now declined to 21.7 and 16.4, respectively. So Tesla no longer appears to be a very expensive stock, especially for a company that increased its vehicle deliveries by 42% in the third quarter from a year earlier.
Analysts polled by FactSet expect Tesla’s stock to double during 2023. It nearly made this list of 20 EV stocks expected to rebound the most in 2023.
Here are the 20 stocks in the S&P 500 that fell the most for 2022 through the close on Dec. 29.
| Company | Ticker | 2022 price change | Forward P/E | Forward P/E as of Dec. 32, 2021 |
| Generac Holdings Inc. |
GNRC, |
-71.4% | 13.7 | 30.2 |
| Match Group Inc. |
MTCH, |
-68.9% | 20.1 | 48.5 |
| Align Technology Inc. |
ALGN, |
-67.7% | 27.4 | 48.7 |
| Tesla Inc. |
TSLA, |
-65.4% | 21.7 | 120.3 |
| SVB Financial Group |
SIVB, |
-65.4% | 10.8 | 23.0 |
| Catalent Inc. |
CTLT, |
-64.6% | 13.0 | 32.5 |
| Meta Platforms Inc. Class A |
META, |
-64.2% | 14.7 | 23.5 |
| Signature Bank |
SBNY, |
-64.1% | 6.2 | 18.6 |
| PayPal Holdings Inc. |
PYPL, |
-62.6% | 14.8 | 36.0 |
| V.F. Corp. |
VFC, |
-62.5% | 11.9 | 20.4 |
| Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. Series A |
WBD, |
-59.9% | N/A | 7.5 |
| Carnival Corp. |
CCL, |
-59.8% | 38.1 | N/A |
| Stanley Black & Decker Inc. |
SWK, |
-59.8% | 17.0 | 15.9 |
| Lumen Technologies Inc. |
LUMN, |
-57.8% | 7.7 | 7.8 |
| Zebra Technologies Corp. Class A |
ZBRA, |
-56.7% | 14.5 | 30.1 |
| Dish Network Corp. Class A |
DISH, |
-56.5% | 8.6 | 10.9 |
| Caesars Entertainment Inc. |
CZR, |
-55.7% | 51.4 | 144.5 |
| Lincoln National Corp. |
LNC, |
-55.1% | 3.4 | 6.2 |
| Advanced Micro Devices Inc. |
AMD, |
-55.0% | 17.8 | 43.1 |
| Seagate Technology Holdings PLC |
STX, |
-53.1% | 15.0 | 12.4 |
| Source: FactSet | ||||
Click on the tickers for more information about the companies.
Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
It is one thing to have a large decline based on the share price, but that doesn’t tell the entire story. How much of a decline have investors seen in the holdings of their shares during the year? The S&P 500’s total market capitalization declined to $31.66 trillion as of Dec. 28 (the most recent figure available) from $40.36 trillion at the end of 2021, according to FactSet.
Shareholders of these companies have suffered the largest declines in market cap during 2022.
| Company | Ticker | 2022 market capitalization change ($bil) | 2022 price change |
| Apple Inc. |
AAPL, |
-$851 | -27.0% |
| Amazon.com Inc. |
AMZN, |
-$832 | -49.5% |
| Microsoft Corp. |
MSFT, |
-$728 | -28.3% |
| Tesla Inc. |
TSLA, |
-$677 | -65.4% |
| Meta Platforms Inc. Class A |
META, |
-$465 | -64.2% |
| Nvidia Corp. |
NVDA, |
-$376 | -50.3% |
| PayPal Holdings Inc. |
PYPL, |
-$141 | -62.6% |
| Netflix Inc. |
NFLX, |
-$138 | -51.7% |
| Walt Disney Co. |
DIS, |
-$123 | -43.7% |
| Salesforce Inc. |
CRM, |
-$118 | -47.8% |
| Source: FactSet | |||
So there is your surprise for today: Apple is this year’s biggest stock-market loser.
Don’t miss: Best stock picks for 2023: Here are Wall Street analysts’ most heavily favored choices
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Even during a year in which the S&P 500 index declined 19%, with 72% of its stocks in the red, there were plenty of winners.
Before showing you the list of the best performers in the benchmark index, let’s look at a preview: Here’s how the 11 sectors of the S&P 500
SPX,
performed for the year:
| Index | 2022 price change | Forward P/E | Forward P/E as of Dec. 31, 2021 |
| Energy | 59.0% | 9.7 | 11.1 |
| Utilities | -1.4% | 18.9 | 20.4 |
| Consumer Staples | -3.2% | 21.0 | 21.8 |
| Health Care | -3.6% | 17.6 | 17.2 |
| Industrials | -7.1% | 18.3 | 20.8 |
| Financials | -12.4% | 11.9 | 14.6 |
| Materials | -14.1% | 15.8 | 16.6 |
| Real Estate | -28.4% | 16.5 | 24.2 |
| Information Technology | -28.9% | 20.1 | 28.1 |
| Consumer Discretionary | -37.6% | 21.3 | 33.2 |
| Communication Services | -40.4% | 14.3 | 20.8 |
| S&P 500 | -19.4% | 16.8 | 21.4 |
| Source: FactSet | |||
Maybe you aren’t surprised to see that the energy sector was the only one to increase during 2022. But it might surprise you to see that despite the sector’s weighted price increase of 59%, its forward price-to-earnings ratio declined and remains very low relative to all other sectors.
It might also surprise you that West Texas Intermediate crude oil
CL.1,
gave up most of its gains from earlier in the year:
The reason investors are still confident in energy stocks is that oil producers have remained cautious when it comes to capital spending. They don’t want to increase supply enough to cause prices to crash, as they did in the run-up to the summer of 2014, after which prices fell steadily through early 2016, causing bankruptcies and consolidation in the industry.
Now the oil companies are focusing on maintaining supply, raising dividends and buying back shares, as Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s
OXY,
chief executive explained in a recent interview with Matt Peterson. Click here for more about Occidental and the long-term supply/demand outlook for oil.
Here are the 20 stocks in the benchmark index that rose most during 2022, excluding dividends. Proving that there are always exceptions, not all of them are in the energy sector.
| Company | Ticker | Sector | Industry | 2022 price change |
| Occidental Petroleum Corp. |
OXY, |
Energy | Oil & Gas Production | 117.3% |
| Hess Corp. |
HES, |
Energy | Oil & Gas Production | 91.6% |
| Marathon Petroleum Corp. |
MPC, |
Energy | Oil Refining/ Marketing | 81.9% |
| Exxon Mobil Corp. |
XOM, |
Energy | Integrated Oil | 80.3% |
| Schlumberger Ltd. |
SLB, |
Energy | Contract Drilling | 78.5% |
| APA Corp. |
APA, |
Energy | Integrated Oil | 73.6% |
| Halliburton Co. |
HAL, |
Energy | Oil & Gas Production | 72.1% |
| First Solar Inc. |
FSLR, |
Information Technology | Semiconductors | 71.9% |
| Valero Energy Corp. |
VLO, |
Energy | Oil Refining/ Marketing | 68.9% |
| Marathon Oil Corp. |
MRO, |
Energy | Oil & Gas Production | 64.9% |
| ConocoPhillips |
COP, |
Energy | Oil & Gas Production | 63.5% |
| Steel Dynamics Inc. |
STLD, |
Materials | Steel | 57.4% |
| EQT Corp. |
EQT, |
Energy | Oil & Gas Production | 55.1% |
| Chevron Corp. |
CVX, |
Energy | Integrated Oil | 53.0% |
| McKesson Corp. |
MCK, |
Health Care | Medical Distributors | 50.9% |
| Cardinal Health Inc. |
CAH, |
Health Care | Medical Distributors | 49.3% |
| EOG Resources Inc. |
EOG, |
Energy | Oil & Gas Production | 45.8% |
| Enphase Energy Inc. |
ENPH, |
Information Technology | Semiconductors | 44.8% |
| Merck & Co. Inc. |
MRK, |
Health Care | Pharmaceuticals | 44.8% |
| Cigna Corp. |
CI, |
Health Care | Managed Health Care | 44.3% |
| Source: FactSet | ||||
Click on the tickers for more information about the companies.
Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
Don’t Miss: These 20 stocks were the biggest losers of 2022
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U.S. stock indexes finished sharply higher on Thursday, the second-to-last trading session of the year, with the Nasdaq Composite jumping 2.6%, erasing losses from earlier in the week.
The three main indexes built on premarket gains after U.S. weekly jobless claims data showed the number of workers receiving benefits has climbed to the highest level since February, a tentative sign that the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes might be slowing economic growth and inflation.
On Wednesday, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.4% to 10,213, its lowest closing level of the year. The S&P 500 is up more than 6% from its 2022 low from mid-October, but the large-cap index remains down 19.2% year-to-date, FactSet data show.
The penultimate session of 2022 showed tentative signs of delivering some much needed festive cheer for the stock market as a hope for “Santa Claus rally” had earlier failed to materialize.
MarketWatch Live: Is that you, Santa Claus?
Stocks advanced on Thursday as data showed the number of Americans receiving more than a single week of unemployment benefits had climbed by 41,000 last week to 1.71 million, the highest level in 10 months.
The jobless-claims data “points to a loosening in the labor market, which is welcome news for the Fed,” said Larry Adam, chief investment officer at Raymond James, in a tweet.
However, analysts at Citi still think the claims data indicates a still-very-tight labor markets compared to historical levels.
“While both initial and continuing claims increased this week, they remain within the levels of late 2019,” wrote Gisela Hoxha, U.S. economics research analyst at Citi. “Anecdotes of company layoffs have increased in recent months, particularly in the tech sector. While it could be hard to disentangle the seasonal effects from the announced layoffs, in our view there is no significant evidence of them showing up in the claims data yet.”
Some of those layoffs could be taking effect a couple months later as employees might be kept on payroll for some time after the announcement, which will become significant signs of weakness in the labor market in 2023, Hoxha added.
Stocks were on track to finish what’s set to be the worst year since 2008 not far from 2022 lows. The S&P 500’s 52-week closing low at 3,577.03 was hit on Oct. 12.
Still, the three indexes managed to erase losses from earlier in the week on Thursday. Nasdaq Composite was down 0.2% this week, while the S&P 500 gained 0.1% and the Dow was nearly flat as of Thursday’s close. If the S&P 500 can hold on to weekly gains through Friday, it would mark the end of a three-week losing streak that has been the index’s longest since September, FactSet data show.
— Jamie Chisholm contributed to this article
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U.S. stock indexes finished sharply higher on Thursday, the second-to-last trading session of the year, with the Nasdaq Composite jumping 2.6%, erasing losses from earlier in the week.
The three main indexes built on premarket gains after U.S. weekly jobless claims data showed the number of workers receiving benefits has climbed to the highest level since February, a tentative sign that the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes might be slowing economic growth and inflation.
On Wednesday, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.4% to 10,213, its lowest closing level of the year. The S&P 500 is up more than 6% from its 2022 low from mid-October, but the large-cap index remains down 19.2% year-to-date, FactSet data show.
The penultimate session of 2022 showed tentative signs of delivering some much needed festive cheer for the stock market as a hope for “Santa Claus rally” had earlier failed to materialize.
MarketWatch Live: Is that you, Santa Claus?
Stocks advanced on Thursday as data showed the number of Americans receiving more than a single week of unemployment benefits had climbed by 41,000 last week to 1.71 million, the highest level in 10 months.
The jobless-claims data “points to a loosening in the labor market, which is welcome news for the Fed,” said Larry Adam, chief investment officer at Raymond James, in a tweet.
However, analysts at Citi still think the claims data indicates a still-very-tight labor markets compared to historical levels.
“While both initial and continuing claims increased this week, they remain within the levels of late 2019,” wrote Gisela Hoxha, U.S. economics research analyst at Citi. “Anecdotes of company layoffs have increased in recent months, particularly in the tech sector. While it could be hard to disentangle the seasonal effects from the announced layoffs, in our view there is no significant evidence of them showing up in the claims data yet.”
Some of those layoffs could be taking effect a couple months later as employees might be kept on payroll for some time after the announcement, which will become significant signs of weakness in the labor market in 2023, Hoxha added.
Stocks were on track to finish what’s set to be the worst year since 2008 not far from 2022 lows. The S&P 500’s 52-week closing low at 3,577.03 was hit on Oct. 12.
Still, the three indexes managed to erase losses from earlier in the week on Thursday. Nasdaq Composite was down 0.2% this week, while the S&P 500 gained 0.1% and the Dow was nearly flat as of Thursday’s close. If the S&P 500 can hold on to weekly gains through Friday, it would mark the end of a three-week losing streak that has been the index’s longest since September, FactSet data show.
— Jamie Chisholm contributed to this article
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Harris Kupperman, the president of Praetorian Capital, made a couple of interesting calls heading into 2022. He predicted that stocks of the giant tech-oriented companies that led the bull market would be sold off, and that oil prices would continue to rise through the end of 2022.
The first prediction came true, while the second one for oil prices fizzled. After rising to $130 in March, oil prices have fallen back to where they started the year. Then again, that second prediction still could have made you a lot of money because the share prices of oil companies kept rising anyway.
That leads to a new prediction for 2023 and a related stock screen below.
Here’s a chart showing the movement of front-month contract prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil
CL.1,
since the end of 2021:
Even though Kupperman didn’t get his oil price call right, the energy sector of the S&P 500
SPX,
was up 60% for 2022 through Dec. 27, excluding dividends. That is the only one of the 11 S&P 500 sectors to show a gain in 2022. And the energy sector is also cheapest relative to earnings expectations, with a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 9.8, compared with 16.7 for the full S&P 500.
WTI pulled back from its momentary peak at $130.50 in early March, but that didn’t reverse the long-term trend of low capital spending by oil and natural gas producers, which has given investors confidence that supplies will remain tight.
Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum Corp.
OXY,
— the best-performing S&P 500 stock of 2022 — said during a recent interview that there was “no pressure to increase production right now,” citing a $40 per barrel break-even point for oil prices.
Kupperman now expects strong demand and low supplies to push oil as high as $200 a barrel in 2023.
At the end of November, these 20 oil companies stood out as reasonable plays for 2023 based on expectations for free-cash-flow generation and dividend payments.
For this next screen, we are only looking at ratings and consensus price targets among analysts polled by FactSet.
There are 23 energy stocks in the S&P 500, and you can invest in that group easily by purchasing shares of the Energy Select SPDR ETF
XLE,
We can expand the list of large-cap names by looking at the components of the iShares Global Energy ETF
IXC,
which holds all the energy stocks in the S&P 500 plus large players based outside the U.S.
The top five holdings of IXC are:
| Company | Ticker | Country | % of portfolio | Share “buy” ratings | Dec. 27 price | Price target | Implied 12-month upside potential |
| Exxon Mobil Corp. |
XOM, |
U.S. | 16.4% | 54% | 110.19 | 118.89 | 7.89% |
| Chevron Corp. |
CVX, |
U.S. | 11.5% | 54% | 179.63 | 190.52 | 6.06% |
| Shell PLC |
SHEL, |
U.K. | 7.8% | 83% | 23.67 | 29.82 | 25.99% |
| TotalEnergies SE |
TTE, |
France | 5.6% | 62% | 59.63 | 64.40 | 8.00% |
| ConocoPhillips |
COP, |
U.K. | 5.4% | 83% | 118.47 | 140.84 | 18.88% |
| Source: FactSet | |||||||
Prices on the tables in this article are in local currencies.
IXC holds 51 stocks. To expand the list for a stock screen, we added the energy stocks in the S&P 400 Mid Cap Index
MID,
and the S&P Small Cap 600 Index
SML,
to bring the list up to 91 companies, which we then pared to 83 covered by at least five analysts polled by FactSet.
Here are the 20 companies in the list with at least 75% “buy” or equivalent ratings that have the most upside potential over the next 12 months, based on consensus price targets:
| Company | Ticker | Country | Share “buy” ratings | Dec. 27 price | Price target | Implied 12-month upside potential |
| EQT Corp. |
EQT, |
U.S. | 83% | 36.34 | 59.14 | 63% |
| Green Plains Inc. |
GPRE, |
U.S. | 80% | 29.80 | 43.40 | 46% |
| Cameco Corp. |
CCO, |
Canada | 100% | 30.48 | 44.25 | 45% |
| Talos Energy Inc. |
TALO, |
U.S. | 86% | 19.77 | 28.67 | 45% |
| Ranger Oil Corp. Class A |
ROCC, |
U.S. | 100% | 41.33 | 58.00 | 40% |
| Tourmaline Oil Corp. |
TOU, |
Canada | 100% | 71.40 | 98.83 | 38% |
| Civitas Resources Inc. |
CIVI, |
U.S. | 100% | 58.82 | 80.83 | 37% |
| Inpex Corp. |
1605, |
Japan | 88% | 1,477.00 | 1,965.56 | 33% |
| Diamondback Energy Inc. |
FANG, |
U.S. | 84% | 137.58 | 181.90 | 32% |
| Santos Limited |
STO, |
Australia | 100% | 7.20 | 9.26 | 29% |
| Matador Resources Co. |
MTDR, |
U.S. | 79% | 57.59 | 73.75 | 28% |
| Targa Resources Corp. |
TRGP, |
U.S. | 95% | 73.89 | 94.05 | 27% |
| Cenovus Energy Inc. |
CVE, |
Canada | 84% | 26.24 | 33.22 | 27% |
| Shell PLC |
SHEL, |
U.K. | 83% | 23.67 | 29.82 | 26% |
| Ampol Limited |
ALD, |
Australia | 85% | 28.29 | 35.01 | 24% |
| EOG Resources Inc. |
EOG, |
U.S. | 79% | 132.08 | 157.52 | 19% |
| ConocoPhillips |
COP, |
U.S. | 83% | 118.47 | 140.84 | 19% |
| Repsol SA |
REP, |
Spain | 75% | 15.05 | 17.88 | 19% |
| Halliburton Co. |
HAL, |
U.S. | 86% | 39.27 | 45.95 | 17% |
| Marathon Petroleum Corp. |
MPC, |
U.S. | 76% | 116.82 | 132.56 | 13% |
| Source: FactSet | ||||||
Click on the tickers for more information about the companies.
Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
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The numbers: U.S. pending-home sales fell 4% in November, which is the sixth straight monthly drop, according to the index released Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
The index was last at this level in the midst of the pandemic lockdown, in April 2020.
Analysts polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast the pending home sales index to drop by 1.8%.
Contract signings fell in all regions across the country.
Pending home sales reflect transactions where the contract has been signed for an existing-home sale, but the sale has not yet closed.
Economists view it as an indicator for the direction of existing-home sales in subsequent months.
Key details: Compared with a year earlier, transactions were down by 37.8%.
On a monthly basis, pending sales fell in all four major U.S. regions, led by the Northeast, where the index fell by 7.9%, followed by the Midwest, the South and the West.
But pending home sales fell the most since last November in the West, by 45.7%.
Pending home sales have fallen in all but one month in 2022.
Big picture: The housing market continues to stumble through 2022, as elevated mortgage rates keep buyers out of the market.
Buyers are finding it hard to find an existing home for sale, as sellers hold on to their homes tied to ultra-low mortgage rates.
November’s data is also tied to the period of time when mortgage rates were above 7%.
What the realtors said: “With mortgage rates falling throughout December, home-buying activity should inevitably rebound in the coming months and help economic growth,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said.
What they’re saying: “Housing markets have entered a winter freeze,” George Ratiu, senior economist at Realtor.com, said in a statement.
“With prices for existing homes still elevated … and mortgage rates above 6%, homebuyers are finding much of today’s real estate landscape inaccessible,” he added.
Ratiu estimated that monthly mortgage payment for a median-priced home has gone up by $780 since last year.
Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
and the S&P 500
SPX,
were mixed in early trading on Wednesday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
rose above 3.8%.
(Realtor.com is operated by News Corp subsidiary Move Inc., and MarketWatch is a unit of Dow Jones, also a subsidiary of News Corp.)
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What fresh shenanigans and money dilemmas enthralled readers in 2022?
Another year of broken promises, dodgy dealings and moving letters about how to get back on one’s feet after divorce, unemployment and even a 15-year abusive relationship.
The most widely-read Moneyist of 2022, however, was actually one of the shortest letters from someone called ‘Surprised Sister.” The answer, as is often the case, was not so simple, nor so short.
Here is the No. 1 Moneyist column of the year: ‘We are surprised and bewildered’: My brother passed away and left his house, cash and possessions to charity. Can his siblings contest his will?
My response: There are times to contest a will: a parent who was being controlled by a new friend or greedy child, and/or someone who was forced to change their will when they were not of sound mind.
But her own legal advice notwithstanding, I suggested she should accept your brother’s wishes. Feeling aggrieved that she did not inherit his estate is not enough to break his will.
Separate the emotions from the finance, and the answer often reveals itself. But there were others that ran the gamut from romance to stocks. They other most-read columns are an eclectic bunch:
Here are the 5 runner-ups:
It would be nice to offer to take the booze off the check, you were a non-drinker, would you speak up at one drink or two or three, if your date split the entire bill 50/50?
The financial intricacies of dating are like an onion that can be peeled ad infinitum. We’ve had plenty to chew over. Paying for one of your date’s drinks is OK, paying for two is pushing it.
“The Other Brother” wrote that his father offered three children a choice: stocks or cash. The other two siblings took the cash. He took the cash. The stock soared. Dems are the breaks.
Her siblings could have chosen stocks over cash, but they wanted immediate gratification. That was their decision, and they are going to have to take ownership of their choice and live with it.
They have been in a 20-year relationship and have a 10-year-old child. “Not on the Deed” said she and her partner have had several tense “discussions” about adding me to the deed.
I told her that her contribution to your partnership is valuable, her sense of worth is valuable, and her role as a homemaker and a mother is also valuable. Yes, he should add her.
Even amidst the fights over inheritances, some breaches of social and financial etiquette seem so bizarre some people might think, ‘That behavior is too outrageous to be believable.”
The letter writer received free theater tickets, they split the bill 50/50 even though her friend had a cocktail, and she paid $10 for parking. Is he obliged to take her out again? No-can-do.
Another dating story, this time where the guy chose a fancy restaurant and, as the date wore on, things took a turn for the worst, at least in the letter writer’s eyes: She was asked to split the bill.
What if they didn’t get along? What if he was an abortion-rights supporter and she was anti-abortion? What if he was a Republican and she was a Democrat? Or vice-versa? Always be prepared to pay.
Follow Quentin Fottrell on Twitter.
You can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions related to coronavirus at qfottrell@marketwatch.com.
Check out the Moneyist private Facebook group, where we look for answers to life’s thorniest money issues. Readers write to me with all sorts of dilemmas. Post your questions, tell me what you want to know more about, or weigh in on the latest Moneyist columns.
The Moneyist regrets he cannot reply to questions individually.
More from Quentin Fottrell:
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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The co-leader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in prison for conspiring to abduct the Democrat and blow up a bridge to ease an escape.
Adam Fox returned to federal court Tuesday, four months after he and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of conspiracy charges at a second trial in Grand Rapids, Mich.
They were accused of being at the helm of a wild plot to whip up anti-government extremists just before the 2020 presidential election. Their arrest, as well as the capture of 12 others, was a stunning coda to a tumultuous year of racial strife and political turmoil in the U.S.
The government had pushed for a life sentence, saying Croft offered bomb-making skills and ideology while Fox was the “driving force urging their recruits to take up arms, kidnap the governor and kill those who stood in their way.”
But Judge Robert J. Jonker said that while Fox’s sentence was needed as a punishment and deterrent to future similar acts, the government’s request for life in prison is “not necessary to achieve those purposes.”
“It’s too much. Something less than life gets the job done in this case,” Jonker said, later adding that 16 years in prison “is still in my mind a very long time.”
In addition to the 16-year prison sentence, Fox will have to serve five years of supervised release.
Fox and Croft were convicted at a second trial in August, months after a different jury in Grand Rapids couldn’t reach a verdict but acquitted two other men. Croft, a trucker from Bear, Del., will be sentenced Wednesday.
Fox and Croft in 2020 met with like-minded provocateurs at a summit in Ohio, trained with weapons in Michigan and Wisconsin and took a ride to “put eyes” on Whitmer’s vacation home with night-vision goggles, according to evidence.
“People need to stop with the misplaced anger and place the anger where it should go, and that’s against our tyrannical … government,” Fox declared that spring, boiling over COVID-19 restrictions and perceived threats to gun ownership.
Whitmer wasn’t physically harmed. The FBI, which was secretly embedded in the group, broke things up by fall.
“They had no real plan for what to do with the governor if they actually seized her. Paradoxically, this made them more dangerous, not less,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said in a court filing ahead of the hearing.
In 2020, Fox, 39, was living in the basement of a Grand Rapids–area vacuum shop, the site of clandestine meetings with members of a paramilitary group and an undercover FBI agent. His lawyer said he was depressed, anxious and smoking marijuana daily.
Christopher Gibbons said a life sentence would be extreme.
Fox was regularly exposed to “inflammatory rhetoric” by FBI informants, especially Army veteran Dan Chappel, who “manipulated not only Fox’s sense of ‘patriotism’ but also his need for friendship, acceptance and male approval,” Gibbons said in a court filing.
He said prosecutors had exaggerated Fox’s capabilities, saying he was poor and lacked the capability to obtain a bomb and carry out the plan.
Two men who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin already is free after a 2½-year prison term, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.
AP/Carlos Osorio/File
In state court, three men recently were given lengthy sentences for assisting Fox earlier in the summer of 2020. Five more are awaiting trial in Antrim County, where Whitmer’s vacation home is located.
When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer, a Democrat, blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”
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The numbers: The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city house price index fell 0.5% in October, its fourth monthly decline.
Year-over-year prices rose rose 8.6%, slowing from 10.4% in the previous month.
A broader measure of home prices, the national index, fell a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in October from September.
A separate report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed home prices remaining flat in October, down from a 0.1% gain the prior month.
And over the last year, the FHFA index was up 9.8%.
Key details: Miami, Tampa, and Charlotte reported the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 cities in October. All 20 cities reported lower price increases.
San Francisco and Seattle reported the lowest year-over-year gains, which have seen prices fall by more than 10% from a peak in May.
Big picture: Housing is in a slowdown, but affordability hasn’t returned. Homes are still expensive, as mortgage rates remain above 6%, and inventory of homes available for sale remains low.
What S&P said: “As the Federal Reserve continues to move interest rates higher, mortgage financing continues to be a headwind for home prices,” Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, said.
“Given the continuing prospects for a challenging macroeconomic environment, prices may well continue to weaken,” he added.
Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
and the S&P 500
SPX,
were up in early trading on Tuesday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
rose above 3.81%.
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Elon Musk has been trying this week to defend Tesla’s abysmal stock performance in 2022. The electric vehicle giant has seen its stock plummet by 61% this year, making it the 11th-worst performing stock in the S&P 500 in 2022.
“As bank savings account interest rates, which are guaranteed, start to approach stock market returns, which are *not* guaranteed, people will increasingly move their money out of stocks into cash, thus causing stocks to drop,” Musk tweeted.
You might expect that Tesla’s stock drop has wiped out more investor wealth than any other stock in the world this year. But you would be wrong.
If we look at declines in market capitalization — the value of companies’ common-shares outstanding — Tesla
TSLA,
has been the fourth worst-performing stock in the benchmark S&P 500 this year, as of 1 p.m. ET on Dec. 21:
| Company | Ticker | 2022 market cap change ($bil) | Intraday market cap on Dec. 21 ($bil) | Dec. 31, 2021 market cap ($bil) | 2022 price change |
| Amazon.com Inc. |
AMZN, |
-$805 | $886 | $1,691 | -48% |
| Apple Inc. |
AAPL, |
-$753 | $2,160 | $2,913 | -24% |
| Microsoft Corp. |
MSFT, |
-$700 | $1,825 | $2,525 | -27% |
| Tesla Inc. |
TSLA, |
-$622 | $439 | $1,061 | -61% |
| Meta Platforms Inc. Class A |
META, |
-$466 | $318 | $784 | -64% |
| Nvidia Corp. |
NVDA, |
-$329 | $406 | $735 | -44% |
| PayPal Holdings Inc. |
PYPL, |
-$143 | $79 | $222 | -63% |
| Netflix Inc. |
NFLX, |
-$134 | $133 | $267 | -51% |
| Walt Disney Co. |
DIS, |
-$122 | $160 | $282 | -44% |
| Salesforce Inc. |
CRM, |
-$119 | $131 | $250 | -49% |
| Source: FactSet | |||||
On a percentage basis, all these stocks have performed worse than the full S&P 500, which has fallen 19%, excluding dividends.
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
has erased more shareholder wealth than any other publicly traded company in 2022. In total, investors in Amazon have lost $804.6 billion this year. The stock is down 48% in 2022.
Apple Inc.
AAPL,
and Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
have also suffered larger market-cap declines than Tesla, by virtue of their sheer size.
The companies have different fiscal and annual period ends, but if we look at data for the past three reported quarters and compare to the same period a year earlier, here’s how the four stack up:
| Company | Ticker | Change in sales for three quarters from year-earlier period | Change in EPS for three quarters from year-earlier period |
| Amazon.com Inc. |
AMZN, |
10% | N/A |
| Apple Inc. |
AAPL, |
6% | 2% |
| Microsoft Corp. |
MSFT, |
14% | -2% |
| Tesla Inc. |
TSLA, |
58% | 169% |
| Source: FactSet | |||
Amazon showed a net loss of $3 billion for the first three quarters of 2022 as the company neared the end of its extraordinary multiyear effort to build out its warehouse and fulfillment infrastructure. For the first three quarters of 2021, the company booked $19 billion in profits. When announcing Amazon’s third-quarter results CEO Andy Jassy said the company was working methodically toward “a stronger cost structure for the business moving forward.”
The incredible growth of Amazon’s cloud business has stalled and disappointed the expectations the company had nurtured on Wall Street. The Amazon Web Services business is facing increasing competition from the likes of Microsoft and its customers are pulling back. Meanwhile, retail sales have also come in weak going into the Christmas and holiday season.
Amazon’s stock has declined 22% since it closed at $110.96 on Oct. 27, right before it disappointed investors not only with its third-quarter results, but with its outlook: It expects to break even during the holiday quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet had previously expected a profit of more than $5 billion.
Tesla stands in contrast to Amazon, as you can see on the table above. Its sales grew by 58% during the first three quarters of 2022 from the year-earlier period and its earnings per share rose nearly threefold.
This has been a year of significant declines for shares of giant tech-oriented companies, especially those that had traded at lofty price-to-earnings valuations — that group includes Amazon and Tesla. In fact, these companies have given up all their pandemic era gains int he stock market.
But with Tesla’s results so outstanding through the first three quarters of 2022, it raises the question: How much of the drop in the electric car makers share price was tied to Musk’s actions as CEO of Twitter, which he acquired on Oct. 27 after a monthslong saga? And how much of a relief rally, if any, might there be for Tesla if Musk, as expected, steps down as Twitter CEO?
Here’s the same list of 10 stocks in the S&P 500 that have seen the largest declines in market cap this year, with a summary of analysts’ ratings, consensus price targets and declines in their forward price-to-earnings ratios:
| Company | Ticker | Share “buy” ratings | Dec. 21 closing price | Cons. price target | Implied 12-month upside potential | Forward P/E as of Dec. 20 | Forward P/E as of Dec. 31, 2021 |
| Amazon.com Inc. |
AMZN, |
91% | $85.19 | $134.85 | 58% | 49.3 | 64.9 |
| Apple Inc. |
AAPL, |
74% | $132.30 | $173.44 | 31% | 21.4 | 30.2 |
| Microsoft Corp. |
MSFT, |
91% | $241.80 | $293.06 | 21% | 23.7 | 34.0 |
| Tesla Inc. |
TSLA, |
63% | $137.80 | $272.64 | 98% | 24.6 | 120.3 |
| Meta Platforms Inc. Class A |
META, |
63% | $117.09 | $145.45 | 24% | 14.5 | 23.5 |
| Nvidia Corp. |
NVDA, |
68% | $160.85 | $195.72 | 22% | 39.2 | 58.0 |
| PayPal Holdings Inc. |
PYPL, |
71% | $68.76 | $104.32 | 52% | 14.5 | 36.0 |
| Netflix Inc. |
NFLX, |
47% | $288.19 | $302.89 | 5% | 28.4 | 45.6 |
| Walt Disney Co. |
DIS, |
82% | $87.02 | $119.60 | 37% | 19.8 | 34.2 |
| Salesforce Inc. |
CRM, |
78% | $128.45 | $195.18 | 52% | 23.4 | 53.5 |
| Source: FactSet | |||||||
A majority of analysts see a golden path ahead for 2023 for all of these stocks except for Netflix.
For more information about any of these companies, click the tickers.
Click here for a detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
Don’t miss: 11 high-yield dividend stocks that are Wall Street’s favorites for 2023
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The numbers: U.S. new home sales rose 5.8% to a seasonally-adjusted rate of 640,000 in November, from a revised 605,000 in the prior month, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
The November sales figure beat analyst estimates. Analysts polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast new home sales to come in at 600,000 in November.
The sales of new homes are below a peak of 1.04 million in August 2020.
Year-over-year, new home sales are still down by 15.3%.
New home sales rose a revised 8.2% to 605,000 in October, compared with the initial estimate of a 7.5% increase to 632,000.
The new home sales data are volatile month-on-month and are often revised.
Key details: The median sales price of a new home sold in November was $471,200, down from $484,700 in October.
The supply of new homes for sale fell by 7.5% between October and November, equating to an 8.6-month supply.
Regionally, the West led the U.S. in the number of new homes sold, with new homes sold surging by 27.6%, followed by the Midwest.
Sales of new homes dropped in the Northeast and the South this November.
Big picture: 7% mortgage rates didn’t put a damper on new home sales, as seen in today’s report.
New home sales jumped in November, likely as buyers wanted to take advantage of incentives that builders are offering, from mortgage rate buydowns to price cuts.
Builders have been gloomy almost all year, fretting about lower traffic.
But with rates coming back down since, expect housing data to improve further.
What are they saying? “I suspect that builders are much more motivated sellers (especially given the surge in financing costs) than current homeowners, who do not want to part with their 3% or lower mortgages,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont, wrote in a note. “This may explain why new home sales are rising while existing home sales plunge. ”
But overall, sales are still weaker than usual: Stanley noted that combined existing and new home sales in November fell to the lowest level since 2011.
Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
and the S&P 500
SPX,
were down in early trading on Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
rose above 3.7%.
Shares of builders, including D.R. Horton, Inc.
DHI,
Lennar Corp
LEN,
PulteGroup Inc.
PHM,
and Toll Brothers Inc.
TOL,
traded lower during morning trading.
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Technology developer to create continuing education courses on incorporating UV disinfection into building design.
Press Release
–
Dec 22, 2022
ORLANDO, Fla., December 22, 2022 (Newswire.com)
–
The challenge of providing people with safe, clean working and living spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic will make health and hygiene central concerns in the future of building design. With accreditation from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 2023, Violet Defense will create courses to educate architects on how they can incorporate UV disinfection technology into their core designs for sustainable buildings.
Violet Defense is an ultraviolet disinfection technology company founded in 2012 and the developer of patented pulsed xenon UV disinfection technology, proven in multiple independent lab tests to kill pathogens, including E. coli, salmonella, S. aureus, C. diff, MRSA, norovirus, coronavirus and SARS-CoV-2.
The concept of incorporating UV technology into facility designs is still relatively new. Since 2020, facility owners and managers have begun to retroactively install UV disinfection systems to improve cleanliness and provide a hygienic environment. However, architects have had little guidance on how to include the technology during the design stage and face a significant hurdle.
For every element in their plans, architects must identify to what specification class it belongs. At this time, UV technology does not fall under any particular specification, with the closest correlation being HVAC purification.
“We believe that, rather than seeing this as an impediment, architects should see this as an opportunity to be among the first to break into a new area of construction design, one that incorporates health and wellness from the very beginning,” said Bruce Mosley, President of Violet Defense. “With AIA certification, we will create courses that will help architects incorporate UV disinfection technology into their designs right from the start.”
Architects with AIA certification are required to take a certain number of AIA-accredited courses within a year in order to maintain that certification. Violet Defense will be developing both in-person and online course offerings.
UV disinfection provides multiple advantages over conventional cleaning methods, such as automation, making it simple and easy for facility managers to schedule and maintain. UV disinfection also is chemical-free, reducing supply costs and the toxic effects of powerful cleansers. Studies also show UV disinfectant to be superior to manual cleaning, enabling disinfection of pathogens in the air and on high-touch surfaces.
Violet Defense technology already is in wide use nationwide, including hotels, convention centers, colleges and schools, and amateur and professional sports training facilities.
For more information, visit: violetdefense.com
About Violet Defense
Violet Defense is dedicated to UV disinfection solutions for a brighter, healthier, more sustainable future. Violet Defense provides trusted and efficient UV disinfection solutions that are sustainable, cost-effective, and protect the places you live, learn, work, and play. We are committed to your well-being and strive to give you confidence and peace of mind wherever you go. To learn more about Violet Defense and its initiatives, visit www.violetdefense.com, or follow us on Facebook or on LinkedIn (@violetdefense).
Source: Violet Defense
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