Retail Sales, Musk’s Twitter Demands, Walmart Earnings – What’s Moving Markets
2022.05.17 13:47
By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com — U.S. retail sales data for Apri, and their significance for Federal Reserve policy, are set to dominate at least the early part of the day. Earnings and guidance from Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Home Depot (NYSE:HD) will also shed light on the strength, or otherwise, of the U.S. consumer. Elon Musk obfuscates in an attempt to drive down the price of his Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) acquisition, causing Twitter stock to drop further and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock to bounce. The defenders of the Azovstal steelworks in Ukraine lay down their arms, ending the longest battle of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and oil prices hit a seven-week high as confidence in Shanghai’s reopening rises. Here’s what you need to know in financial markets on Tuesday, 17th May.
1. Retail sales to sway Fed?
Is the U.S. consumer still spending, or have inflation and talk of an economic slowdown ahead already killed the desire to get out and have fun in a world without lockdowns? We shall all be a little bit the wiser at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT), when the U.S. releases retail sales numbers for April.
Sales are expected to have risen 0.9%, which would be their strongest increase in three months, while core sales are expected to have grown only 0.4%, which would be their weakest increase in four months.
With forecasts like that, any number of interpretations should be possible. Fortunately, there will be a handful of speakers from the Federal Reserve in the course of the day to let us know if the numbers have changed anything (there’s a hint of hope in the air that a bad number will persuade the Fed to ease up on the policy tightening front).
Fed chair Jerome Powell headlines at 2 PM ET, while James Bullard and Patrick Harker will be the warmup acts and Loretta Mester and Charles Evans will be your hosts for the after-party.
2. Obmuskation
Elon Musk said his deal for Twitter can only proceed if the social media company can prove its estimates about fake and spam users. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal had posted a long thread on Monday explaining why this is, for all practical purposes, impossible.
Musk claimed, via the microblogging site (not via an SEC filing, of course) “20% fake/spam accounts” as a baseline – some four times what Twitter estimates. He added for good measure that the figure “could be *much* higher.”
“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of
