April 1, 2022

It’s April!!

Good evening, y’all! Happy Friday and congrats on surviving another week in the Market of Stocks.

All four indexes rallied over 10% to start the month!!

Jk, no they absolutely didn’t. Happy April Fools’ Day! 🤡

The markets traded lower at the open, but ripped into the close. 🚀 The Russell 2K rallied 1.01% and the Dow rose 0.4%. The S&P 500 increased 0.34% today and 0.06% for the week.

Kosmos Energy expanded 10% and closed positive for the sixth straight week. $KOS is on a roll in 2022, up 128.35%. Here’s the weekly chart:

8 of 11 sectors registered gains. 💪 Real estate raged 2%, utilities added 1.4%, and materials marched 1.06%. Industrials decreased 0.78%.

The United States added 431,000 jobs in March, falling short of the 490,000 expected (but still indicating healthy employment growth.) The unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, marking a two-year low. More on this data below.

Ethereum roared back 5.3% to $3,455 and Bitcoin bounced 1.75%.

$BLBX blasted 19.4%, $SBS spiked 11.09%, and $AAVE.X accelerated 21.3%.

Here are the closing prices:

S&P 500	4,545	+0.34%
Nasdaq	14,261	+0.29%
Russell 2000	2,091	+1.01%
Dow Jones	34,818	+0.40%

Economy

Some Jobs Numbers to Brighten Your Day ✨

In spite of high inflation and fears of an upcoming recession, job numbers from last month were… pretty good! With respect to employment, March’s numbers indicate a return to (some kind of) pre-pandemic normalcy. 👏

The unemployment rate beat analysts’ expectations — March’s unemployment rate clocked in at 3.6% (below analysts’ expected 3.7% and below February’s rate of 3.8%.) Additional nonfarm payrolls for the month totaled 431,000 (economists expected 490,000 payrolls.) Overall, the U.S. labor force increased by 418,000 employees, just 174,000 workers shy from pre-pandemic participation in the workforce. 🙌

Here’s a sector breakdown of where jobs were added:

Leisure & hospitality: 112,000
Professional & business services: 102,000
Retail: 49,000
Manufacturing: 38,000
Social assistance: 25,000
Construction: 19,000
Financial: 16,000

March has marked the eleventh consecutive month that the U.S. workforce has increased by over 400,000 laborers/month. 📈 Lydia Boussour of Oxford Economics shared her enthusiasm for March’s strong employment figures:

“All the constraints on the labor supply that were prevailing in 2021 have really eased. [That is] a really important factor in driving that next leg of the recovery and getting employment back to where it was before the pandemic.” Right on! 🥳

Company News

Amazon’s Staten Island Plant Votes to Unionize

Workers at Amazon’s Staten Island facility have voted in favor of unionizing, marking the first-ever unionization among Amazon’s U.S. workforce.

Out of the 57% of Amazon’s workers who voted at its JFK8 facility in Staten Island, 2,654 voted to unionize and 2,131 dissented. The union group was creatively named the “Amazon Labor Union.” Plans to unionize are not finalized, however. It may take months for the union to become officially recognized. JFK8’s spokesperson, Chris Smalls, declared: “Today the people have spoken, and the people wanted a union.”

Amazon, however, does not seem pleased. 😅 The company expressed its wish to avoid unionization efforts: “[Amazon is] disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees.” The tech giant hinted at its interest in carrying out an objection to the union, but no details were disclosed.

Union efforts at Amazon’s facility Bessemer, Alabama are also underway — the plant has held two different votes to unionize over the last year. JFK8’s vote to unionize is consistent with the broader trend of unionization efforts among large companies throughout the U.S.

$AMZN gained just 0.35% today.

Trending on Stocktwits 🔥

Manning and Napier surged 40.4% to all-time highs after being acquired by Callodine Group for $12.85/share, aka a 41% premium above Thursday’s closing price. Manning & Napier will become a completely owned subsidiary of Callodine, bringing years of experience to the company’s expanding platform. The deal is projected to wrap up in the third quarter of 2022.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment gained 43.8% and closed at ten-week highs after announcing upcoming content releases planned for April. Here are the full details.

$CSSE is down 17.14% in 2022… Here’s the daily chart:

Greenidge Generation raged 33.95% today to six-week highs after topping earnings and sales estimates in the fourth quarter. Revenue grew 433% during the full year 2021.

$GREE | EPS: ($1.03) (vs. ($1.08) expected) | Revenue: $44.3 million (vs. $32.7 million expected) | Link to Report

Bullets

Other News…

🛢️ The U.S. isn’t the only nation tapping into oil reserves. Yesterday the Biden Administration announced its release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the U.S.’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves. Today, the International Energy Agency (whose members include Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea) declared its solidarity with the U.S. and said that it would also release oil reserves, though the amount of oil to be released has not been specified. The agency holds 1.5 billion barrels of oil in its reserves. Here’s the WSJ with more info.

🚗 Sales are lagging in the auto industry. Companies like Toyota and GM are seeing slipping sales figures as a result of vehicle shortages. Analysts anticipate that the entire industry’s sales could stumble as much as 16% in the coming months; Toyota’s sales were down 15% last quarter and GM’s were down 20% over the same period. Here’s the WSJ with more.

🌿 The House just voted in favor of federal marijuana legalization. The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act was just passed in the House (approved in a 220-204 vote) to legalize marijuana on the federal level and forgive criminal penalties associated with marijuana usage or distribution. The Senate has a similar bill, but it’s unlikely to pass with the necessary 60 votes.