Today's Scoop:

Hey friends, hope you had a great weekend. Don’t miss last week’s Weekly Scoop and Biodiversity Explained

Here’s what you need to know today…

1. Hiring picked up in April.

2. Corporate profits have been much stronger than expected.

3. Consumers are less worried about inflation.

S&P 500: 4,138.12
1Mo: +1% | 1Yr: +4% | 5Yr: +52%

The market didn't do much today, with investors still paralyzed by indecision. The economy is definitely slowing down, but it’s holding up better than expected.

Big companies aren’t slowing down as much as investors feared. We’re most of the way through first quarter corporate financial updates, and 80% of the market has reported better earnings [🤓] than expected. Three quarters have posted higher sales than expected, according to Factset. Analysts had projected the biggest 500 companies to suffer a 7% decline in profits, but they’re on track to shrink by only 2%.

Hiring picked up in April, and unemployment fell. The Labor Department said US employers increased staff by 253,000 workers last month, far more than economists expected and higher than March and February. The unemployment rate declined to 3.4%, the lowest level in over fifty years.

Consumers are a little less worried about inflation. The New York Federal Reserve's consumer survey highlighted a decline in one-year inflation expectations. People expect living costs to rise by 4.4% over the next year. Inflation expectations are important because they can influence behavior that becomes self-fulfilling. Businesses raise prices to keep up, and consumers spend before things get more expensive.

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• Disney worries Marvel might be losing steam

• Goldman Sachs tries to avoid public gender discrimination lawsuit

• Salesforce adds AI to Slack

• DoorDash says food delivery is booming

• Coinbase walks back plans to leave the US

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Earnings Per Share (EPS)

Earnings Per Share (EPS) is one of the two main metrics you’ll find in the news about a corporation's quarterly financial update. Earnings is another word for profit, and so is net income. Earnings per share are the company's profit divided by the number of shares available. It's a standard way for an investor to evaluate whether the company is earning more or less profit this quarter than the investor expected.

Understanding how much the stock price is marked up over the company's profitability is also helpful. That's called a price-to-earnings multiple (P/E multiple). If one company's share price is 15x higher than its earnings per share, investors are more confident in its future growth than a company whose share price is 12x its EPS.

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