Bulls today are thanking Jeff Bezos & Co. for not pulling a Facebook, as Amazon’s earnings-driven premarket jump helps keep the stock market on track for a weekly win.
Twitter TWTR, -20.54% is getting really tripped up though, so bears still can smile.
Away from the internet’s big names, another touchy sector has alarmed investors as well, says our call of the day, which comes from the Wolf Street financial blog’s Wolf Richter.
“GM, Fiat Chrysler, and Ford all got ugly,” he writes, in reflecting on this past week’s action. And it happened “in unison” — “something we haven’t seen since the financial crisis.”
General Motors shares GM, +2.12% are down 7% for the week as of yesterday’s close, whacked by the company’s warning on high raw-materials costs due to tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Meanwhile, Fiat Chrysler FCAU, +0.96% FCA, -0.28% is showing a weekly drop of 13% after reporting problems in China and changing its CEO. And Ford F, +0.40% is off 6% for the week, hit by an earnings miss and lowered guidance, leaving the stock at a roughly six-year low.
It didn’t have to be this way, Richter suggests.
“This isn’t the financial crisis. This is as good as it gets. The economy is growing,” he says in his post titled “Carmageddon in Detroit.”
“So these ugly outlooks hailing down on the good times are rattling nerves and leaving folks to wonder what will happen to the auto makers when the times are no longer this good.”
