The S&P 500 and Dow each reversed earlier losses to trade higher. The Nasdaq also rose even as shares of Netflix (NFLX) weighed on the index. Netflix sank 7% after the company reported first-quarter subscriber growth that sharply missed expectations, suggesting the boost the tech company received while people were at home during the pandemic was rapidly unwinding.
But Netflix aside, the majority of other major companies reporting earnings reports over the past two weeks have topped consensus expectations. Still, the three major stock indexes have languished in recent days even given the stream of positive reports. Concerns over a near-term peak in growth in the early innings of the COVID-19 recovery have risen and conflated with fears over an impending rise in input costs for companies and prices for consumers.
“We’ve moved along from being driven by sentiment and momentum, and now investors are starting to focus more on fundamentals,” Ryan Nauman, market strategist at Informa Financial Intelligence, told Yahoo Finance. “We’ve had this fantastic rally … and I think investors are just pausing right now to digest more fundamentals, more of the earnings releases that are going to start coming out over the next couple weeks.”
