Your bite-sized weekly update (5 June)

What happened?

Source: Bloomberg. Price data as of market close on 3 June 2022.

US markets fell slightly for the week as many prominent business leaders voiced their concerns about a potential recession. 

This was despite continued strength in the US labour market, as the economy added a greater than expected 390,000 jobs in May. This led to renewed concerns about further tightening by the Fed to bring down inflation.

China stocks were a bright spot after Shanghai and Beijing eased Covid restrictions. Share prices got a further boost from better than expected earnings reported by tech giants such as Alibaba. 

The Singapore market was resilient on increased optimism towards Chinese and energy stocks. Gains were led by mid-cap oil and gas related stocks such as Dyna-Mac and stocks with significant China exposure such as Hongkong Land and Yangzijiang Financial. 

What you need to know

Elon Musk has ‘super bad feeling’ about the economy

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he has a “super bad feeling” about the US economy, and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric car maker. This caused Tesla’s share price to crash 9.2% on Friday. Read more here

SATS can’t find enough workers as tourists return 

SATS reported a weaker than expected set of results for the quarter ended March, disappointing investors looking at the company as a beneficiary of Singapore’s Covid re-opening. 

This caused SATS’ share price to fall by close to 10%, becoming the worst performing stock in Singapore’s benchmark STI index in the past week. Read more here

What does Amazon’s stock split mean for investors

Amazon shareholders have approved a 20-for-1 stock split. What this means is that if you own one Amazon share, you will receive 19 additional shares.  Read more here

What to look out for in the week ahead

The highlight of the week will be the highly anticipated US consumer price index, which will give investors an indicator of whether inflation has peaked when it is realized on 10 June (Thursday).

Trading of Amazon stock on a split-adjusted basis is expected to begin on 6 June (Monday). 

Earnings are expected from NIO (Thursday), Docusign (Thursday) and Futu (Monday), among others.