Equities are...not having a good morning. Neither is crude oil. But gold and silver are flattish, as are Treasuries and the dollar.
On the news front...
Investors were already worried about Tesla’s (TSLA) price cuts. Late yesterday, they got a look at what those and other challenges meant for earnings. First-quarter profit met expectations, but profit margins deteriorated notably. That helped send TSLA shares down more than 7% in the pre-market.
If you believe the performance of transportation stocks foreshadows problems for the economy then...don’t read any further. The Dow Jones Transportation Average is underperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average by a notable margin, which as this Wall Street Journal story notes, is typically a signal of impending weakness. Smaller capitalization stocks are also weaker than large caps.
Some numbers to consider: The iShares Transportation Average ETF (IYT) is down 7.7% in the last year, compared with a 1.6% loss for the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA). The iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) that tracks smaller cap names is down 10.4%.
As for housing, the real estate brokerage Redfin said prices fell 3.3% to just over $400,000 in March. That was the biggest year-over-year decline in 11 years. That said, a cooldown in housing is arguably good news for people trying to get onto the first rung of the property ladder. The surge in house prices in 2020-2021 far outpaced wage and income growth, causing affordability to plummet and pricing out many potential buyers.
