Weekly Stock Market News | GOOG / AMZN / PINS / SQ / PYPL / COST & other Stock Market News [02-08]
**The stock market finished a terrific week at record highs. Companies like Google, Pinterest, Amazon & others smash earnings reports while Jeff Bezos bows out. Let’s talk about this & other stock market news**

Hello everyone! So, let’s start with the recap of last week, as we saw all 3 major indexes finish the week with big gains with the SP500 & Nasdaq Composite finishing at new record highs while the Dow Jones did also rise for 5 straight sessions. For the week the [DOW](https://imgur.com/NQpg47q) gained 3.9%, the [SP500](https://imgur.com/cY3wx9N) rose by 4.65% and the [Nasdaq Composite](https://imgur.com/T5qgyg5) outperformed gaining just over 6% in what was the best week since early November.

The Volatility [Index](https://imgur.com/Ki1RNHZ) dropped every day last week as it now seats just above 20, with this being a huge level that hasn’t been broken in a long while.

We saw all 11 [SECTORS](https://imgur.com/pp8DYTh) finish the week in the green, with Energy leading the way followed by Consumer Discretionary, Communications & Financials also gaining more than 6%.

[Here](https://imgur.com/tRRK4fZ) is the HEAT MAP from last week, as we saw a hole lot of green in pretty much every sector, with big tech names gaining huge while the biggest lagging sector was Health Care. The big tech names just continue to [increase](https://imgur.com/96Q4J9w) their % of the SP market cap as technology is likely to continue to be one of the best performers in the next decades.

We also saw some interest economic data last week, as manufacturing continue to recover in January as both the [ISM](https://imgur.com/Q9ZPnxF) index and the [PMI](https://imgur.com/nVz0oDe) Index came in pretty solid and continued to stand in expansion territory.

Also, the [ISM](https://imgur.com/jgJ2IbI) Services Index came in better-than-expected rising above expectations due to an increase in employment & new orders.

In terms of Job numbers, we saw [ADP](https://imgur.com/a39dqcB) coming in way better than expected as over 170K jobs were added after a big drop in December. We also saw initial jobless [claims](https://imgur.com/ftMXubP) dropping even more than expected while the continuing jobless claims fell to under 4.6M last week.

This [WEEK](https://imgur.com/vLr3QHG) is pretty quiet in term of economic data, with core CPI, Consumer indexes and jobless numbers being the biggest ones while the [EARNINGS](https://imgur.com/PMP5olx) season continues with some of the most interesting earnings coming from Twitter, Coca-Cola, GM, Uber & PepsiCo while we also have to see how Disney subscriber numbers are continuing to evolve after hugely upgrading their expectations. One other thing that I am also interested to watch is the PayPal investors day on Thursday in which they are expected to provide a 3-to-5-year financial outlook.

In some other stock market [news](https://imgur.com/EcqHtMU), it seems that most of the RBNHD retail investors that have jumped ship are going to Square’s Cash APP with almost 40% of investors choosing the app. We have to see if this trend continues now, after [RBNHD](https://imgur.com/joQIln0) removed limits on all stocks, but regardless, I think Square is a nice FinTech play despite their huge valuation right now, as they will also benefit from the jump in digital currencies and more companies planning to increase investments in integrated POS providers just like Square.

We also had a lot of interesting earnings last week with Amazon [crushing](https://imgur.com/GILwN3r) expectations, beating by almost $7 and almost $6B on revenues as this was the first time Amazon passed the $100B mark in a quarter as the holiday & e-commerce demand combined to give Amazon a 44% increase y/y in sales. The other big [thing](https://imgur.com/WMmAddL) we got from Amazon was that Bezos will step down as CEO as Andy Jassy the current AWS leader will become the next CEO. This news caused some uncertainty for the company, but I believe this is still a long-term buying opportunity as Amazon will remain one of the best companies to own in the world.

Also, one of the biggest fintech companies out there, [PayPal](https://imgur.com/Klv5tD6) showed great strength in their numbers, beating both the top & bottom line as their total payment volume and new active accounts showed continued strength in the move to more & more online payments solutions.

The other big earnings report we saw last week was from [Alphabet](https://imgur.com/5BOUPT0), which also beat by more than $6 and $4B in revenues as they surprised most of the analysts with great beats in most of the segments as their operating margin came in 5% better than expected. The biggest income generator remained the Search & YouTube business as they are still investing huge in their Cloud platform that is still bleeding money, but is very likely to pay out in the long-run.

Other companies also smashed earnings with [Pinterest](https://imgur.com/0zB9SPh) beating expectations after a 76% revenue growth and a 37% user growth while [Ford](https://imgur.com/zerclC2), which was expected to post a loss, turned out positive earnings of $0.43 despite a 9% decrease y/y in total revenues, as the last 2 quarters of the year provided strong evidence that Ford is progressing into turning around the company.

Meanwhile, though they didn’t have an earnings report, [COSTCO](https://imgur.com/6UmGJ7x) reported a rise in sales of almost 18% in January as the total comparable same store sales which rose by 15.9% crushed the analyst expectations of just 11.7%. I believe Costco is one of the best retailers to own despite it trading always at a premium, as the company is also jumping on the e-commerce trend, with a 107% increase in e-commerce sales in January.

And finally, let’s hope for a good day as the [world](https://imgur.com/itl9KxB) stock markets and the US [Futures](https://imgur.com/mlrfLz5) are pointing to a good open with the Nasdaq leading the way after the Treasury Secretary [pushed](https://imgur.com/jfKvaev) for more fiscal aid to help the economy & the unemployment fully recover as fast as possible.

**Thank you everyone for reading🙏 Hope you enjoyed the content! Be sure to leave a comment down below with your opinion on the stock market! Have a great day and see you next time❗**
https://www.reddit.com/r/StockMarket/comments/lfb2xe/weekly_stock_market_news_goog_amzn_pins_sq_pypl/