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No rest for the weary, folks. The stock market took another slide today, giving back yesterday’s nice gains — and then some. The Dow shed -427 points, -0.99%, while the S&P 500 was down -104 points, -1.78%. The Nasdaq performed the worst of the major indexes for the session, down -483 points or -2.61%, while the small-cap Russell 2000 slipped -1.63%.

It’s been a dire month for market indexes, no doubt. The Dow is -4.8% over that time period, the S&P 500 is -5.6%, the Nasdaq -8.7% and the Russell 2000 a stomach-churning -10.4% just since this time last month. Q4 earnings season was good overall, economic reports have thus far moved rather gracefully, but the forward outlook on tariffs and whether the AI spend has gotten out of hand are heavy March headwinds.

Tomorrow morning is the big Employment Situation report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), whereas of now it is still expected that 170K jobs (+4.0% unemployment) will have been filled for the month of February. Wednesday’s private-sector payrolls from ADP (ADP - Free Report) came in only around half of what was estimated. Layoffs in the federal government began roughly a month ago, so we’ll see if this has any additional impact to jobs numbers.

Q4 Earnings Season Grinding to a Halt: COST, GAP, AVGO
 

Costco (COST - Free Report) reported fiscal Q2 earnings after today’s closing bell, missing on the bottom line by 7 cents to $4.02 per share, but still up +9% from the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $63.72 billion outpaced the $63.22 billion in the Zacks consensus. It’s the first earnings miss in two years for the big-box warehouse club, and shares are down another -1% after falling -2% for the regular trading day. Shares are still up +12% year to date.

The Gap (GAP - Free Report) posted a very strong Q4 this afternoon, notching 54 cents per share versus the 36 cents analysts were looking for, on revenues of $4.1 billion that narrowly outperformed the $4.07 billion expected. Flagship Gap comps were +7% year over year; Banana Republic was +4%, somewhat offset by Athleta’s -2% comps from a year ago. Shares are surging +15% on the news in late trading. 

Chipmaking major Broadcom (AVGO - Free Report) beat bottom-line estimates by a solid dime to $1.60 per share after today’s close, on revenues of $14.92 billion which surged past $14.62 billion. Its AI business grew an extraordinary +77% from the same quarter a year ago, with free cash flow now at just over $6 billion. Broadcom shares are also jumping +15% in today’s after-market.

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