April 8, 2019

Dow on Shaky Ground as U.S. Stock Market Approaches ‘Moment of Truth’

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The Dow lagged the broader U.S. stock market on Monday, as investors shifted their focus to corporate earnings and shaky fundamentals – a pivot that could spell trouble for the Fed-inspired rally.

Dow Lags S&P 500 and Nasdaq with Triple-Digit Fall

The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined by as much as 185 points on Monday, reflecting a tepid pre-market for U.S. stock futures. It was last down 102 points, or 0.4%, at 26,322.31.

Dow Jones Industrial Average down triple-digits Monday afternoon. | Chart via Yahoo Finance.

Shares of Boeing Co (BA) plunged 4.6% after the company announced Friday it would temporarily cut production of its best-selling 737 MAX 8 jets. Bank of America Merrill Lynch immediately lowered its rating on the stock to neutral’ from ‘buy.’

The broad S&P 500 Index of large-cap stocks edged down 0.1% to 2,891.26. Utilities and industrial companies were the biggest drags on growth.

The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite Index was trading at 7,942.04, where it was virtually unchanged.

U.S. stocks just rounded out their best quarter since the financial crisis. Read more: S&P 500 Sees Best Start to a Year Since 1998.

U.S. Stock Market Lurches Toward ‘Moment of Truth’

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The U.S. stock market faces a “moment of truth” as investors begin shifting their focus back to fundamentals and away from monetary policy, according to Morgan Stanley. In a research note published Monday, the bank’s chief U.S. equity strategist Michael Wilson said first-quarter earnings could be “gut check” time for Wall Street.

“The moment of truth may be arriving with first-quarter earnings results,’’ Wilson said, according to Bloomberg.

In Wilson’s view, Wall Street’s huge turnaround in the first quarter is entirely due to the Federal Reserve, which has not only refrained from raising interest rates but has scrapped plans for doing so this year. With no rate hikes expected for the remainder of the year, U.S.

The outlook may be about to change as S&P 500 companies get ready to deliver their latest financial results. For the first time since 2016, corporate earnings are expected to decline year-over-year. According to FactSet, industries such as energy, materials and information technology are expected to be the hardest hit.

Reporting season picks up later this week with a pair of results from JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC).

Published at Mon, 08 Apr 2019 19:04:36 +0000

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December 2, 2017

AWS on Blockchain Reluctance: ‘We Don’t Build Technology Because We Think the Technology is Cool’

At a time when many companies are rushing to embrace blockchain technology, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has adopted a more cautious ‘looking but not touching’ approach.

At this year’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, CEO Andy Jassy made clear AWS’ stance on the popular technology, telling journalists that while they have “a lot of customers and partners who either build blockchains on top of AWS or are building services to use blockchain on top of AWS,” they have no plans to integrate the technology themselves anytime soon.

Jassy stated:

We don’t yet see a lot of practical use cases for blockchain that are much broader than using a distributed ledger. We don’t build technology because we think the technology is cool, we only build it if we think we can solve a customer problem and building that service is the best way to solve it.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

While the cloud services platform, which boasts such high profile customers as the NFL, Time Warner, and the Walt Disney Company, isn’t necessarily averse to rolling out a blockchain product at some point, AWS says that isn’t a need for it at this time.

As far as Jassy is concerned, there aren’t many use cases for blockchain technology beyond the distributed ledger. He noted that most of the use cases for which their customers are turning to blockchain technology can already be solved using other technologies – most of which AWS already has within its existing capabilities.

Competitors Rush in Where AWS Won’t (Yet) Tread

AWS has many competitors in the cloud services space and many of those competitors, including IBM and Microsoft, are more optimistic about blockchain technology and distributed ledgers.

This year, Microsoft rolled out Coco, a framework designed to facilitate blockchain adoption by adapting existing blockchain protocols or by creating entirely new protocols, and their Azure Blockchain service, a BaaS (blockchain as a service) that enables businesses to quickly and easily configure and deploy a blockchain network.

IBM also launched their own BaaS, IBM Blockchain, which “empowers businesses to digitize transaction workflow through a highly secured, shared, and replicated ledger.” In addition, they have joined The Hyperledger Project in an effort to help advance cross-industry blockchain technology.

The blockchain ecosystem has received a lot of hype in recent months for its unparalleled solutions across several industries, including business, health, insurance, supply chain, artificial intelligence, and many others. Just like any new technology, the first adoption is very important in creating value. But since the sector is still growing, more research is needed, as clearly stated by Jassy, in order to ensure the realization of the true use cases of this technology. But as to whether there are other systems that will be more useful in solving decentralized problems than the blockchain, that is yet to be known.

Do you think AWS is making a mistake by not throwing their hat into the ring and embracing blockchain technology? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Flickr/JD Lasica, AdobeStock, Flickr/debbie ding

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