U.S. stocks closed Tuesday near session lows after mixed earnings results from several major companies. The S&P 500 shed 1.2%, the Dow fell 0.7%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 1.9%. Nick Giacoumakis, President and Founder of NEIRG Wealth Management, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Closing Bell

Stocks Close Near Session Lows Amid Mixed Corporate Earnings

do you want to turn though to the guest joining me now is Nick Jacume aka founder and president of any I. R. G. Wealth management. Nick. Thanks so much for joining the show, disappointing day today investors taking some risk off the table. Of course with big earnings on top. And that fed decision tomorrow. What's your take on the current state of play here in the stock market? Sure. I think we're in obviously a major week coming up. So what we're looking to see is how you know the big numbers come out from the big text with Microsoft alphabet amazon reporting. Really it's gonna be all about guidance. So not just the numbers, what they're looking for going forward. We do have results from Microsoft. I do want to get those to our viewers. It looks like actually a disappointment on earnings, $2.23 nick. We did see the expectation was $2.29 revenue coming in at $51.9 billion. That was also a little bit light and the stock is down fractionally in the after hours. What does this say about the path forward for these major indexes? I think that's what investors might not realize sometimes is even if they're invested in the broad market indices names like Microsoft, the biggest games out there do have more of an outsized impact certainly than smaller companies in these indices. What should investors be watching? Sure. I think you know what's your point if you look at Microsoft, it's one of the top two holdings in the S. And P. $500. A large cap mega text. So it's your point that's going to have more of a drag on the S and P. 500 in general. I think in Microsoft's case is really two or three headwinds that they had. The is your business is slowing down also with the dollar being at, you know, over a 20 year um you know, strong point where it is right now that also causes additional headwinds for the company. So when you look at these two or three aspects, it's not surprising to see that they reported like this. So let's get you a few more details here in this Microsoft report did see commercial bookings, Negro 25%. Cloud revenue was 25 billion, that was up 28% from the same time a year ago. So still double-digit growth. But a similar story for Microsoft as two other multinationals that we've heard from and that's a stronger U. S. Dollar having a negative impact on sales. Actually it looks like it took about four cents per share off of earnings had an impact on revenue of close to $600 million. So more than half a billion dollars. But this company saw some operating expenses of 126 million I guess that was relatively small compared to the forex charge there. Um did see employee severance expenses of 100 and 13 million excluding Russia. So clearly some shifts going on at this very company. But we saw the intelligent cloud sales of 20 Productivity and business processes of 13 And personal computing up just about 2%. So it seems like the cloud here Nick very much at play. Very much in focus for Microsoft. No, absolutely was pretty good considering the downturn that we've seen overall. Yeah, I think that's a good point. The stock now down 2% though after hours will continue to cover Microsoft here in the moments ahead. But nick, let's focus again on these broader markets. Do or die week for the stock market and investors, we talked about the impact with some of these big earnings certainly like Microsoft and alphabet as soon as we get those as well. But the spend meeting in focus too. What's your projection as to how the Fed might raise rates tomorrow and what that does mean for the path forward for stocks? Sure. We believe the Fed is going to go another 75 basis points tomorrow. Um, looking at the market, we might have a little bit more relief over the summer. We typically see in fair market years when you have the trading die down a little bit in the summer, in the month of July and August, so we expect it to be choppy through the summer, but we believe as we get out towards september, we get closer to the midterms, we're going to see the market make new lows, new lows being the new low since the bear market started earlier this year. So I don't think we've seen the low point in the market. Our expectation would be probably 30-50 on the downside. The S&P. And again, we believe that's gonna happen as we get closer towards October into November time, interesting. Um others have made similar calls and then on the flip side there are super bullish calls out there, like ones from Jpmorgan that will end at a new record high before the end of the year that we might reach a record high. But most of the calls on this show happen to the downside that the state of the consumer is a little bit wishy washy of course just admit the current situation that we find ourselves in globally. So as the founder and president of a wealth management company, what are you advising your clients? An investor? Should they stay the course? Should they be trying to find bargains in this market or should they be waiting to get in at potentially lower levels. Sure, great question. So what we're doing with our clients is we've, we've stayed defensive this year, we've started getting defensive last fall as we were coming into the early winter so late fall, early winter, you know, we're looking for companies that big, strong balance sheets, heavy, heavy dividend payouts, strong cash flow, have pricing power. We like the fuel space. We like agriculture, we like natural resources and some of the commodities where these can weather the storm, but also some of the consumer staples, you know the general mills of the world and the crafts and the and again basically you know consumer staples. So we've stayed fairly defensive you know soon there'll be a time to uh start nibbling away at your point on on growth growth sector. But we don't believe it's that time yet that time will come. But I would say you know the safer bet would be rather than trying to catch a falling knife which is what we've seen all year. Right? Be better off waiting until we get past the first of the year. Alright Nick Marcus, founder and president of any I. R. G. Wealth management, thank you so much.