Earnings season + Musk’s Twitter bid drive Wall Street losses: US stocks extended their April losses yesterday on the back of falls in big tech firms and continued angst over inflation and heightened covid restriction in China, the Wall Street Journal writes. Shares in Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet both dropped following the release of their 1Q earnings — but the biggest loser of the day was electric carmaker Tesla, which fell over 12% to knock some USD 110 bn off the electric carmaker’s valuation, the Financial Times reported. The drop comes as investors fret that Tesla boss Elon Musk will need to sell a major stake in his firm to raise liquidity for his planned takeover of Twitter in a USD 44 bn, all-cash transaction. The S&P 500 dropped 2.8%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost around 4% to see its lowest close since late 2020.

ALSO- HSBC income hit by Ukraine war, China property crunch: HSBC’s pre-tax earnings fell 28% y-o-y in 1Q 2022 after reporting almost USD 650 mn in expected credit losses from exposure to Russia and China. The bank said further stock buybacks — after USD 3 bn in buybacks unveiled over the last two quarters — would be “unlikely” for the rest of the year. The story is getting wide pickup in the global financial press, including Bloomberg. (Earnings release, pdf)

BREXIT, SHMEXIT- London was 2021’s top city for foreign investment in finance: The UK capital attracted GBP 600 mn into 114 financial and professional services projects in 2021, according to a report published by the City of London Corporation, putting it ahead of Dubai and Singapore, which came in second and third place, respectively. (Report)

THE CLOSING BELL-

The EGX30 rose 1.3% at yesterday’s close on turnover of EGP 708 mn (22% below the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net buyers. The index is down 10.6% YTD.

In the green: AMOC (+5.4%), EFG Hermes (+4.9%), and Abu Qir Fertilizers (+4.9%).

In the red: Fawry (-6.8%), MM Group (-4.9%) and Cleopatra Hospital (-4.4%).

Major Asian benchmarks are solidly in the red at dispatch time, with the Nikkei leading the decline (-1.8%), followed by Seoul’s Kospi (-1.1%). European benchmarks and the TSX Composite are set to follow suit later today at the opening bell, while futures suggest Wall Street could buck the trend.