Photo: David Vives / Unsplash (archive)
Stock futures were mixed as Americans headed to the polls Tuesday morning. Yahoo Finance’s delayed quotes timestamped around 6:59 a.m. EST showed Dow futures down 0.85% and S&P 500 futures down 0.18%, while Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.19%. These are timestamped snapshots, not live prices.
Apple was among the stocks under pressure. Reuters reported a premarket decline of about 4% in its report updated at 6:42 a.m., after management warned about pressure on holiday-quarter margins.
A record quarter, a stark warning
Apple reported September-quarter revenue of $114.5 billion, up 12%, record September-quarter iPhone revenue, an all-time high for Services, and diluted earnings of $2.10 a share. Fiscal-year revenue reached a record $479 billion. John Ternus, delivering his first earnings report as CEO, called the new iPhone Duo “the most transformational iPhone since the original.”
The warning was Apple’s own outlook, not a forecast by JBizNews. On the company’s November 2 earnings call, management projected December-quarter gross margin of 45% to 46%, with higher memory costs and the rollout of Siri AI weighing on margins, Reuters reported. CFO Kevan Parekh also forecast holiday-quarter Services growth of 8% to 9%, according to PYMNTS’s account of the call. Those projections are forward-looking and may change.
Even a 96% growth rate isn’t enough anymore
Palantir reported revenue up 96% to $2.313 billion, its first $2 billion quarter, with U.S. commercial revenue up 148%. Its shares fell anyway. As JBizNews reported earlier this morning, Benzinga’s 6:24 a.m. EST report put the shares down 8.15% at $163.80 in premarket trading, despite the earnings beat and higher outlook.
Monday’s regular session ended mixed: the S&P 500 closed down 0.51% at 7,541.40 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.07% to 25,164.36, while the Dow gained 0.41% to 51,983.98.
Election Day arrives
The midterm elections add political uncertainty to the earnings and interest-rate picture. Overseas, South Korea’s Kospi closed down 3.59%.
Brent crude futures were up 1.65% at $106.50 a barrel in Yahoo’s delayed quote timestamped 7:12 a.m. EST. The 10-year Treasury yield quote was 4.894%, but that figure was Monday’s closing reading, not a new Tuesday-morning move.
Monday brought one solid economic number: factory activity reached 55.5 on the ISM index in October, beating forecasts. Production was at its strongest since November 2021, though input prices remained high.
What it means for you
Oil prices, borrowing costs and device prices are the household-budget channels to watch. A decline in crude does not guarantee an immediate drop at the pump, and a Treasury-yield move does not automatically translate into the same change in mortgage or auto-loan offers. Apple’s outlook points to cost pressure on the company; it is not a promise of another retail price increase. Compare actual prices and loan terms rather than treating a market snapshot as a household saving.
What to watch today
At 10 a.m. Eastern time, the September job-openings report is scheduled for release. AMD reports after the market close, another test for chip stocks. Election results will be another focus as polls close this evening.
JBizNews Desk | Wall Street
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