Pro Perspectives 4/27/20

April 27, 2020

We’re in the heart of earnings season now.  This week we’ll hear more companies talk about beefing up liquidity (cutting dividends, pausing share repurchases, drawing on credit lines) and issuing new debt or refinancing existing debt, to the extent they can – all in an effort to buy time. 

 

And this comes just as states are laying out plans for reopening businesses.

 

But as businesses reopen we'll begin to see the damage done to supply, demand and incentives.

On the latter, as we discussed on Friday, employers will be trying to rebuild support staff, whom in many cases have collected more from the government sitting at home, than they ever have from working for their employers.

Aside from the yet resolved health crisis, the economic problems that will be revealed in the coming weeks will become a challenge for a stock market that has bounced 32% from the March 23rd lows. 

With that, here's another look at the chart we've been watching in stocks …

As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, with some big technical resistance coming in between 2,930 (the 61.8% retracement of the big decline) and 3,006 (the 200-day moving average), we will probably find the top of a range,  until/unless we have validation of a successful treatment option for the virus.  The U.S. trials should be reported soon, but they seem to be in no rush.