Stock market news round-up, and thoughts on today's market

US PMI shows business activity grew more than expected in April, reaching a near one-year high and pushing up inflation
The latest Markit PMI for the US manufacturing sector unexpectedly returned to above the 50 mark in April, and rose to 53.7 in April, with the services PMI rising instead of falling to new highs since October last year and April last year, respectively. Strong demand supported a general expansion in business activity in the US manufacturing and services sectors in April, but also revived inflation that had cooled earlier in the year. Chris Williamson, an economist at S&P Global, commented that the upturn in demand was also accompanied by renewed price pressures, with CPI likely to rise, or at least remain somewhat elevated.
Money is flooding into US stock ETFs as Wall Street issues back-to-back warnings
A number of Wall Street investment banks have recently issued warnings that the rally in US stocks is doomed to fail and a crash is imminent, but investors seem to be choosing to ignore this. In April alone, more than US$12.6 billion flowed into US traded index funds (ETF), the largest inflow since January, with US$5.2 billion flowing in February and US$3.1 billion in March.
Moody's downgrades 11 banks after another outflow of US bank deposits
Seasonally adjusted data released by the Federal Reserve on Friday showed that US bank deposits fell by US$76.2 billion to US$17.2 trillion in the week ended April 12, compared with US$17.3 trillion in the previous week. Outflows were mainly seen at large banks and foreign institutions, but deposits at smaller banks also recorded a decline. On the same day, ratings agency Moody's downgraded 11 regional banks, including $U.S. Bancorp(USB.US)$ . , $Bank of Hawaii Corp(BOH.US)$ , $Zions Bancorporation N A. 6.95%Fixed To Fltg Subord Nts 15/09/2028(ZIONL.US)$ , $Western Alliance Bancorp(WAL.US)$ and $First Republic Bank(FRC.US)$ .
At least nine lawmakers sell bank shares amid US banking turmoil
Last month, the US banking crisis triggered turmoil in the financial markets. According to media reports, at least nine members of the US Congress sold off bank stocks before and during the market turmoil in March. According to the reports, New Jersey Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer disclosed that he sold $1,000-$15,000 worth of Silicon Valley Bank shares on 9 March. The day after his sale (March 10), Silicon Valley Bank was declared to have collapsed and taken over by the FDIC, triggering a massive plunge in US bank stocks.
Google merges AI chip team into cloud computing unit to catch up with Microsoft and Amazon
$Google-A ( $Alphabet-A(GOOGL.US)$ )$ has reportedly shifted its team dedicated to AI chip development to its cloud division. It is reported that Google is making this adjustment mainly because it wants to enhance the competitiveness of its cloud computing team to catch up with its strong rivals $Amazon(AMZN.US)$ Cloud and Microsoft Cloud. Google will integrate its two AI R&D labs, DeepMind and Google Brain, to strengthen the company's AI division.
Tesla's market capitalisation slashes in a year as Musk is denounced by a coalition of shareholders
On Friday, EST, 17 institutional shareholders of Tesla joined together to issue an open letter to the $Tesla ( $Tesla(TSLA.US)$ )$ board, saying that CEO Musk is distracted by other companies and must be reined in. The investors pointed out that Tesla's market capitalisation has shrunk badly over the past year, with its current market capitalisation being only half of its $1.2 trillion market capitalisation on April 4 last year. And what upsets Tesla's shareholders most is that Musk is distracted too much from the operations of other companies. The 17 institutional shareholders together hold more than $1.5 billion worth of Tesla stock.
Lyft plans job cuts that could affect 30% of its workforce
Ride-hailing company $Lyft Inc ( $Lyft Inc(LYFT.US)$ )$ plans to implement a new round of job cuts, eliminating 1,200 or more positions. This round of layoffs could affect 30% or more of the company's workforce, which numbers more than 4,000 employees. The company plans to announce the move after next week's board meeting.
The key financial events and data for this week (4.24-4.28) are as follows:
In terms of economic data, the US will release the core PCE price index for March, the preliminary annualised quarterly rate of US real GDP for the first quarter and the US initial jobless claims for the week to April 22, among other heavyweight data coming out.
The earnings season is culminating with a number of heavyweight earnings reports coming in. In the US, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon and Intel are set to announce their earnings reports. The report card of technology stocks is crucial for the whole market, as the 7 percentage point gain of the S&P 500 in the first quarter was mainly driven by a handful of technology giants
On the basis of the above data, I personally believe that the focus this week is on the earnings report and plan based on the performance of the earnings report $SPDR S&P 500 ETF(SPY.US)$ $S&P 500 Index(.SPX.US)$ $Nasdaq Composite Index(.IXIC.US)$ $Invesco QQQ Trust(QQQ.US)$ $ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ ETF(SQQQ.US)$