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Pre-market indexes are sinking this morning, after coming off a -1/4 to -3/4 selloff, depending on the index, on Monday. We’re light on new economic prints at this hour — save for a new record-low trade deficit, which may be contributing to the sour mood this morning — but still have plenty of Q1 earnings reports to parse through. The Dow is down -300 points, the S&P 500 -50, the Nasdaq -250 and the small-cap Russell 2000 is -20 points currently.
New Record Trade Deficit: -$140.5 Billion
Before 2022, we had never seen a monthly print on the U.S. Trade Deficit that reached 12-figures (-$100+ billion). Today, for March, we see this headline come in at a new all-time record depth: -$140.5 billion. This is worse than the -$137.6 billion estimated, which itself would have been a fresh record negative trade level, and follows the previous record, which was downwardly revised to -$123.2 billion.
These are not normal times for trade, however, as we know. Perhaps when the smoke clears we’ll see these numbers level-off some. Clearly, plenty of additional importing ahead of the April tariffs have distorted these numbers, but we’ll have to wait and see to what extent these numbers continue at or near record lows. (This trade deficit metric has been in play every month since 1992.)
Q1 Earnings Morning: DoorDash, ADM & Marriott
DoorDash DASH shares are trading down -5% on its Q1 earnings results released ahead of today’s open, even after beating earnings estimates by +10% to 44 cents per share. Revenues of $3.03 billion missed expectations by nearly -2%. The company has announced the acquisition of London-based Deliveroo for the equivalent of $3.9 billion, and hospitality tech firm SevenRooms for $1.2 billion. Shares had been up +22% year to date.
Agriculture major Archer-Daniels-Midland ADM beat estimates by a penny to 70 cents per share this morning, although this is still well off the $1.46 per share reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenues missed expectations by -2.5% to $20.18 billion. Weeks ago, the company announced it was halting some operations in China, and the global trade war is likely to take a toll on ADM, which is trading down -6% year to date.
Global hotelier Marriott International MAR shares are up nearly a percentage point this morning following its Q1 beat of 5 cents per share to earnings of $2.32. Revenues were modestly light of estimates, -0.10%, to $6.26 billion — still up from $5.98 billion reported in the year-ago quarter. Marriott shares are still down -11% from the start of the year, but +4% from a year ago.