STOCK MARKET NEWS: GM warns, equities slip, airlines deal with July 4th travel chaos

U.S. stocks inched lower as the new month kicked off following the worst first half of a year since 1970 with investors cautious heading into the long July 4th holiday. General Motors cuts its profit outlook blaming supply chain delays. In commodities, oil hovered at $108 per barrel. 

GM now expects to earn as much as $1.9B down from the prior estimate of $2.4B due to the ongoing supply chain crisis.

In 2Q: “Vehicle wholesale volumes were impacted by the timing of certain semiconductor shipments and other supply chain disruptions. As a result, we had a total of approximately 95 thousand vehicles in our inventory that were manufactured without certain components as of June 30, 2022, a majority of which were built in June.

We expect that substantially all of these vehicles will be completed and sold to dealers before the end of 2022. For the three months ended June 30, 2022, we expect net income to be in the range of between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion…”

U.S. equity futures traded lower Friday morning, starting the new month the same way the old month ended. On Thursday, Wall Street closed out its worst quarter since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. It was the worst first half since the first six months of 1970.

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Benchmark U.S. crude traded around $107 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard was around $114 a barrel.

The OPEC oil cartel and allied producing nations decided Thursday to increase production of crude oil, but the amount will likely do little to relieve high gasoline prices at the pump.

Bitcoin traded below $20,000 as July begins. The cryptocurrency has traded down for four consecutive days heading into Friday. Bitcoin ended June down more than 41%. Year-to-date Bitcoin is down more than 59%. Ether is above $1,000. Dogecoin is at 6 cents.

The price of a gallon of regular gasoline slipped on Friday morning to $4.842, according to AAA. The price on Thursday was at $4.857. Gas has declined for 14 straight days. Diesel slipped as well to $5.760 down from $5.772.