Notizie e analisi

Markets just got indulged into a renewed scepticism about the proper, or quick enough, speed of monetization for artificial intelligence (AI) features developed by Photoshop creator Adobe. For the previous quarter, Adobe actually sold $5.71 million worth of its services, beating estimates of $5.66 billion. This was a record achievement for the entire existence of Adobe's business, but performed only 1.8% better quarter-on-quarter and 10% higher year-on-year. Consensus earnings were beaten by even a wider margin, as the company earned $5.08 per share, compared with estimates of $4.97 per share and against $4.81 in the previous quarter (+5.6%) and $4.48 in the same period one year ago (+13.4%). However, the crowd, spoiled by the overall AI segment success, is no longer satisfied with these current Adobe growth numbers and is thirsty for more. Recent weeks' pullback in tech stocks played, of course, its role in the negative reaction to the report, which was compounded by Adobe's relatively modest forecast for the rest of the year.

Thus, shares of the company lost almost 5% in the extended trading this Wednesday, March 12, following Adobe's current quarter's revenue projection, set between $5.77 billion and $5.82 billion, even though this clearly continued an uptrend in sales and was basically in line with Wall St analyst pool's numbers, according to data compiled by LSEG. The last wave of the rising market sentiment in Adobe started exactly two months ago, on January 13, when the stock bounced from its 18-month local dips below $404 per share to reach the levels above $465 in mid-February. AThen the growth potential became exhausted, and now it was not restored by the reaffirming statement from Adobe management on its annual revenue forecast as the company is "well positioned to capitalize on the acceleration of the creative economy driven by AI".

Annual "recurring revenue" for Adobe’s "AI and add-on offerings" was $125 million only, as its CFO Dan Durn expects it may double in the next three quarters, which was not enough for the crowd's satisfaction. People want even higher sales numbers instead of eloquence, and are willing to postpone the next wave of Adobe's rally until better times. A return to the major technical support around $400 looks quite possible, as does a slide even somewhat lower for a while. Yet, a move to the average analyst target around $560 promised 27.7% of potential income even before the overnight decline began, and it could give even more to patient investors who are going to wait for lower levels to pick up the stock which is still cheapening. Tough competition from newly born startups is here, but for me, Adobe looks stronger than most newcomers.

Maker (MKR) is down 6.2% this week to $1,120, underperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) has gained 1.6% to $83,261. MKR surged by 39.6% to $1,599 in February, fuelled by strong market activity. Whale Alert recently reported a significant burn of MKR worth $156.7 million, a bold move that temporarily pushed prices above key resistance levels. However, a proper retest of the $1,000 support is necessary to confirm stability. If this level holds, the bullish scenario could regain momentum, making further upside the likely outcome.

IOTA (IOT) is up 1.5% to $0.1774 this week, slightly outperforming Bitcoin (BTC), which has risen 0.8% to $82,500. Despite these gains, investor sentiment remains cautious, with speculation that BTC could drop to $73,000, where a significant number of margin traders’ stop-loss orders are concentrated. A decline of this magnitude—another 10% from current levels—could trigger further selling pressure, forcing retail investors to capitulate and allowing prices to fall even lower.

IOTA continues to trade below the $0.2000 support level, which is not yet a critical concern. However, the current technical setup suggests that a deeper decline to $0.1000 remains a possibility. Despite this downside risk, a mid-term recovery toward $0.3000 appears to be a reasonable upside target if market conditions improve.

Investors saw the bloodbath in the U.S. stocks this Monday. The market’s volatile nature coupled with a long-term uptrend has led to losing nearly $1.7 trillion of capitalization on March 10. The S&P broad measure closed the day 2.7% lower, down 155 points, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures posted their worst single-day performance since September 2022, falling more than 4% to 19,118 during Asian hours the next morning. Of course, this was not an irreversible emergency call for dip buyers, yet further bullish demand has very quickly transformed itself into a pent-up force waiting until the proper time. The optimistic camp is still here but most brave guys preferred to retreat to the bushes, purely standing by with prudence, after they fled helter-skelter and scrambled away from a suddenly panicked sell-off.

Markets were reportedly spooked by fears over a potential recession, which sparked sharp declines on Wall Street following U.S. President Donald Trump's uncharacteristically evasive comments as he declined to rule out chances for the American economy to enter a recession this year. “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump literally said in an interview with Fox News that aired on the weekend, adding that the goal of his policy is “bringing wealth back to America", which is "a big thing", but taking "a little time". He later compounded the verbal damage on Air Force One by saying, “Who knows?”. According to CNN, "It was less what Trump said but how a president known for unshakeable certainty said it", but even those ill-wishers to Trump who immediately raised their voices that Trump "never told voters there might be a recession on the road to his new golden age", acknowledged in their editorial that "the latest recession panic may be fleeting". Monthly jobs report showed last Friday that the U.S. economy added an adequate number of 151,000 jobs in February, with the unemployment rate only slightly edging up to 4.1%.

What Trump has done with 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada, even though partially frozen for a month, as well as doubling the rate of levies on Chinese goods to 20% and more threats to European imports, is fraught with retaliatory troubles for American manufacturers. Markets are rightly sceptical that Trump's team is able to quickly translate the tariff policy as a launching pad for negotiations with partner countries into solutions that will stabilize the stock market jumps. On the other hand, nothing has basically changed for the economy in the last few days, and so what happened is still more like a naturally emotional response, providing a useful release of excess steam, especially in overheated tech assets. In another interview with CNBC on Monday, Kevin Hassett, who is the head of Trump’s National Economic Council, tried to play down worries about the health of the economy: “What I think that what’s going to happen is the first quarter is going to squeak into the positive category, and then the second quarter is going to take off as everybody sees the reality of the tax cuts”, meaning an ambitious timetable for pushing a tax-cutting bill through Congress. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday also said “there’s going to be no recession in America”.

Last week, stock and crypto traders already faced a roller coaster, and just landed to lower levels right now. With the investing community additionally losing some confidence in the whole situation, the search for the ultimate bottom will continue, but we estimate that attractive levels could be located somewhere around 5,500 points in terms of the S&P 500. Moreover, not all popular tech stocks were ready to fall as rapidly as Tesla, which lost 15% of its value in one go. More quarterly earnings from key companies may sweeten the pill. Shares of Oracle initially revealed a 2% jump upward on the same day when everything else was falling, and the AI database business only later reluctantly retreated by 4% following all peers' decline. Oracle was promised to make a sizable $500 billion investment into a cloud data centres infrastructure project Stargate, in conjunction with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Japan’s SoftBank. Oracle CEO Safra Catz shared a vision that growing sales backlog will help drive as much as 15% of revenue growth in its fiscal 2026, aiming for $66 billion, to beat 12.6% of consensus analysts’ estimates. "We are on schedule to double our data center capacity this calendar year," Oracle's chair Larry Ellison added.

Oracle's cloud revenue in the last quarter rose 25% to $6.2 billion, with the total revenue being mostly in-line with forecasts after coming out at $14.13 billion, instead of average estimates of $14.39 billion. Oracle projected the current quarter's total revenue growth of 9-11% in constant currency, with cloud revenue rising 24 to 28%. Its CEOs reiterated plans of expansion in partnerships with NVIDIA and AMD. Oracle business collected $1.47 of adjusted profit per share, compared with analyst projections of $1.49 per share, to keep the same high level of $1.47 from the previous quarter. While Oracle shares are still trading below the key psychological $150 level, its price could slide lower by inertia of a broader sell-off in techs. However, targets around $200 for Oracle are worth keeping in mind.