Wall Street closed up, fake tweets notwithstanding. The S&P 500 rose 1.04 per cent, ending at 1,578.77. It fell 0.85 per cent in minutes on Tuesday on a hacked, faked Associated Press tweet about explosions at the White House (Reuters).
Apple unveiled "the largest single share repurchase authorization in history". It added $5obn to its existing stock buyback plan, boosting a now-$100bn programme to return cash to investors by the end of 2015 (Apple capital return statement). Apple also boosted its dividend 15 per cent, to $3.05 per share. "In conjunction with the expanded return of capital program, the Company plans to borrow," it added, promising details at a later date. Apple will not repatriate offshore cash as part of its plans, executives said in the earnings call.
Moody's assigned Apple an Aa1 rating. (Moody's statement).
Apple's quarterly earnings fell year on year for the first time in a decade. It posted a net profit of $9.5bn or $10.09 per diluted share, better than a $9.98 estimate for the quarter but below $11.62bn or $12.30 per share a year earlier (Wall Street Journal).
Sales in the fiscal third quarter of 37.4m iPhones and 19.5m iPads were above forecasts (Apple earnings statement). Apple gave guidance of between $33.5bn and $35.5bn in revenue for the fiscal third quarter, posting $43.6bn this quarter. Earnings in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan rose to 18 per cent of overall Apple revenue, from 12.5 per cent in the last three months of 2012.
Tuesday's brief "tweet retreat" showed "the knee-jerk market reaction has not changed since 2007" (FT Short View). Gold, the yen, and the dollar all fleetingly shined as crisis trades. A group calling itself the "Syrian Electronic Army" claimed responsibility for AP's hacked tweet (Financial Times).
The world economic outlook became gloomier. The manufacturing PMI for the euro area economy as a whole dipped to a four-month low of 46.5 in April, while Germany's fell to 48.8, a six-month low (Financial Times). The manufacturing PMI for the US -- a relatively new measure compared to the ISM survey -- showed the weakest gain for new orders in half a year, and fell to 52 from 54.6 last month.
MF Global's bankruptcy trustee sued Jon Corzine for unspecified damages. Louis Freeh alleged that Corzine and other executives had left risk controls at the doomed broker "lacking and in disrepair" through an ambitious expansion strategy (Reuters).
Huawei is "not interested in the US market any more," according to one of its executives (Financial Times). The decision marks the end of years of Huawei seeking entry into the US market for telecom network equipment, only to be rebuffed over security concerns.
FURTHER FURTHER READING
- The "Flash Crash of '13".
- "No human believed the story... Humans win."
- Attempted markets in everything: the Cypriot deposit trade.
- Europe: "A weak economy, low rates, low bond yields, never-ending deficits; it all looks remarkably Japanese."
- BIS paper du jour: "Is China or India more financially open?"
- Reinhart & Rogoff still not the prime mover of austerity politics.
