Morgans AM: Monday, 15 November 2021

Morgans Financial Limited

US equity markets rallied but till logged their first weekly decline in six weeks amid heightened inflation concerns - Dow up +179-points or +0.50% to close at 36,100.31. Johnson & Johnson climbed +1.2% after the world’s largest healthcare company announced that it is splitting in two, breaking off its consumer health division (which is forecast to generate US$15B in sales this year) into a separate publicly traded company in 18-to-24 months time. It marked the latest in a wave of well-known global companies to announce plans to split up last week, following US industrial conglomerate General Electric Co (+0.55%) and Japan’s Toshiba, in an effort to slim down and focus on individual businesses. The broader S&P500 gained +0.72%. Tesla Inc fell -2.83% to extend its weekly decline to -15.4% - the electric vehicle company’s worst week in 20-months – as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Elon Musk commenced with his plans to sell a huge block of his holding in the company. A Securities and Exchange Commission filling late last Wednesday (10 November) showed Mr Musk sold more than 4.5M shares for close to US$5B, and a further 1.2M shares worth more than US$1.2B on Friday (12 November). Mr Musk sold shares in part to satisfy tax obligations related to an exercise of stock options (he faces an August 2022 deadline to exercise more than 20M additional options or let them expire worthless. The Nasdaq rose +1.00%. Facebook-parent Meta Platforms Inc rallied +4.01%, while Apple Inc (+1.43%), Microsoft Corp (+1.29%) and Amazon.com Inc (+1.52%) each added more than >1%. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 added +0.11%.