Trading results for 14 January 2025
The first full working week of the year was marked by tension, and investors remain nervous despite the fact that today’s trading session ended on a positive note overall. This positive note was relative, of course, since some indexes finished the day in the green, while others were in the red. This mixed performance could be seen both in the leading US indexes and in the ITS indexes. In the United States, the Dow Jones (+0.52%) and the S&P 500 (+0.11%) closed above zero, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended the day in negative territory (-0.23%).
In Kazakhstan, the ITS World (ITSW) global market index closed slightly higher, edging into positive territory at the very end of the trading session, closing with a gain of 0.12%. The ITS Shariah index, however, ended the day down by 0.6%.
Overall, it should be noted that trading was highly volatile, with every index fluctuating between gains and losses several times throughout the day. Investors were focused primarily on macroeconomic data concerning inflation. Before the start of Tuesday’s main trading session in the United States, Producer Price Index (PPI) data was released, slightly exceeding expectations. Although this news was certainly a positive development, America’s key inflation data, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), will be released tomorrow. As several commentators aptly noted, investors are “holding their breath” in anticipation. What to expect from tomorrow’s data remains entirely unclear. As a result, market sentiment was shaped by individual corporate stories, including the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly (LLY, -6.59%), whose stock endured a very bad day.
Before the start of trading, the company announced earnings that fell short of expectations for two flagship drugs: Mounjaro (a diabetes medication) and Zepbound (a weight-loss treatment). These two medications account for a third of the company’s profits, and suddenly it turns out that the profit they produce will be slightly less than expected, though year-over-year sales of these drugs grew by 32%. Yikes! Speculators swiftly went to work, with the company’s shares losing nearly 8% of their value at one point during the session.
Naturally, this was reflected in the indexes. While Eli Lilly’s decline was offset by strong gains in Chinese stocks (nine of the day’s top ten performers were Chinese companies) in the ITS World Index, the ITS Shariah index lacked such a counterbalance, resulting in a slight decline.
However, there’s certainly no need for concern just yet. The week’s main events will unfold starting Wednesday, 15 January, with the release of consumer inflation data and the start of the new corporate earnings season.