Thursday, April 17, 2025

This morning, it’s the blue-chip Dow Jones Index’s turn to bring a disappointing performance. After yesterday’s trade tariffs hit a snag with semiconductors to China sent the tech-heavy Nasdaq on a steeper decline, this morning’s Q1 earnings miss from Dow component UnitedHealthcare is helping send that index -600 points at this hour.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are both in the green at this hour: +25 points and +140 points, respectively, as is the small-cap Russell 2000: +6 points. Only the Dow is trading in the red over the past five sessions, but since April 2nd — what President Trump called “Liberation Day,” the Dow is -7.65%, the S&P 500 -6.71%, the Nasdaq -6.19% and the small-cap Russell 2000 -8.62%.

Weekly Jobless Claims Remain Benign: 215K, 1.895M

Among the best-behaved economic metrics, not just since the trade war began but going back over the past several years, are Weekly Jobless Claims. Initial Claims for last week were 10K below expectations to 215K, and 9K beneath the slightly upwardly revised 224K from the previous week. Aside from a 260K outlier one week way back in October of last year, new jobless claims have stayed remarkably low.

Continuing Claims have lately ping-ponged between 1.9 million prints (which get revised slightly downward the following week) to a weekly read in the mid-1.8’s. This time, we didn’t even reach 1.9 million — 1.895M — up from a downwardly revised 1.844 million the previous week. Even longer-term jobless claims do not demonstrate any meaningful unemployment creep for the economy in the near-term.

Housing Starts, Building Permits Mixed for March

The housing market continues to struggle, with a seasonally adjusted, annualized Housing Starts rate of 1.324 million units last month coming in below the 1.41 million expected — the lowest print since November of last year. The previous month’s revision moves slightly down to 1.50 million units. We are now far-removed from levels around 1.8 million new houses built per month three years ago.

Building Permits — seen as a proxy for future starts — shed some positive light on the housing market: 1.482 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units came in at the highest level since December of last year — above the estimated 1.44 million and the 1.46 million reported for February. The past five months look stronger than the previous five; the trick is not to translate these permits into ground-breaking for new homes.

Philly Fed -26.4: Lowest Print in 2 Years

Regional manufacturing for the region of the sixth-largest city in the U.S. comes through the Philly Fed Index, which this morning reported -26.4 for March — its worst level since April of 2023. Expectations were for slight growth of 3.5, and followed a +12.5 from the prior month. Overall price increases and projections for sluggish growth have pushed this metric down for last month. (Earlier this week, the comparable Empire State Index was also negative, but moderating to -8 from -20 the previous month.)

Q1 Earnings Roundup: UNH, AXP & More; NFLX After the Close

We mentioned earlier that UnitedHealthcare UNH missed expectations in its Q1 report this morning, on both top and bottom lines, and also cut estimates for the full year. Earnings of $7.20 per share came up 7 cents shy of the Zacks consensus on revenues of $109.58 billion, -1.4% from estimates. This nosedive in stock price ahead of the bell takes the health insurance major into negative territory year to date. For more on UNH’s earnings, click here.

Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.

American Express AXP put up mixed results in its Q1 report ahead of today’s open, with earnings of $3.64 per share outperforming by +5.5%, and revenues of $16.97 billion coming in just short of expectations (-0.18%). Cardholder spending increased in the quarter, and the company kept its full-year guidance intact (not such a common thing these days). Shares are up marginally in early trading, but still -14% year to date. For more on AXP’s earnings, click here.

Homebuilder D.R. Horton DHI posted misses this morning in its fiscal Q2 report, with earnings of $2.58 per share down -3% from the Zacks consensus estimate $2.66. Revenues of $7.73 billion came in light of expectations by -4.4%. The company also cut its revenue forecast for the fiscal year on weak demand for new homes. Shares are down another -3% in the pre-market, -19% year to date. For more on DHI’s earnings, click here.

After today’s close, the first of the “Mag-7” stocks — if we’re still calling them that — reports earnings: Netflix NFLX. The global streaming giant has performed relatively well year to date: +8% versus -8% in the S&P 500. We expect the company to post +7.8% earnings growth and +12.5% in revenues. Netflix has posted earnings beats in each of the last four quarters, by an average of +7%.

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UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (UNH) : Free Stock Analysis Report

Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) : Free Stock Analysis Report

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D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI) : Free Stock Analysis Report

This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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