Trump Vows Schools Reopen & Travel Stocks Sink – Daily Financial News Summary for Tuesday, July 7, 2020
After a big day of gains yesterday, today’s results rebounded back and we saw losses across the markets, including a slide just before the closing bell to put the markets deeper in the red. The Dow Jones closed down 1.51%, the S&P 500 was down 1.08%, while the NASDAQ ended down 0.86%. This ended five days in the green for the NASDAQ and the S&P 500.
Travel stocks continue to suffer as the yo-yo effects of reopening and COVID threats impact travel domestically and internationally. Norwegian Cruise Line and Carnival were both down by more than 5% each, while United Airlines was down by 7.6% as they announced additional furlough and layoff warnings. American Airlines also saw it’s stock close the day 6.95% lower.
Levi Strauss & Company announced that sales were down 62% in the second quarter and that the company also plans to cut about 15% of its global workforce as a result. That dive in sales was a result of their retail locations being closed for nearly 10 weeks and their need to rely on online sales, which could not cover the retail sales.
According to Peter Cardillo, the chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities, “This market is way overbought. This market has been ignoring the potential problems that are going to arise from the coronavirus.”
President Donald Trump plans to keep schools on track to be reopened in the fall despite COVID cases continuing to grow, he said in a White House event today. More than 50 million children attend school in the United States.
“We’re very much going to put pressure on the governors and the schools to reopen, open your schools in the fall,” the President said.
TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, is again become a target on the radar of another government. After India announced bans of TikTok this past week, among other Chinese technologies, Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said Tuesday that the United States is also looking at banning the popular social media app, along with other Chinese social media apps that may be creating national security concerns.
Stock Insights: Samsung Q2 Profit Up 23% Amid Covid-19 Disruptions
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd (OTCMKTS:SSNLF) weathered COVID-19 disruptions in Q2, going by the stellar financial results for the three months ended June. The South Korean juggernaut saw underlying profits come in better than expected, helped by surging internet traffic that saw chip demand surge to record levels. The hardware giant also benefited from a spike in hardware demand as more people were forced to work from home in the quarter.
Operating profits were up 23% coming in at 8.1 trillion won or $6.8 billion in the quarter compared to 6.2 trillion reported in the same quarter last year. Net sales totaled 52 trillion won driven by strong demand or chips used in making internet devices.
https://callputstrike.com/2020/07/07/samsung-q2-profit-up-23-amid-covid-19-disruptions/