Wall Street Watch: Post-Apple Earnings Tsunami, Big Banks Face Scary Downgrade

After jitters surrounded its earnings reports thanks to AT&T’s (NYSE:T) first quarter iPhone sale numbers, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares closed down two percent on Tuesday. But things changed after the company subsequently reported its fiscal quarter two earnings report after the bell. Earnings topped forecasts with earnings per share almost doubling to $12.30 and revenue jumping 59 percent to $39.2 billion. iPhone shipments surged 88 percent to 35.1 million units and iPad sales jumped over 150 percent to 11.8 million. In premarket trading, shares are up nearly 10 percent.

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Five of the big banks are facing a potential Moody’s downgrade, along with $22 billion in additional costs. The CEOs are aggressively pushing back against the ratings agency with efforts last seen before the financial crisis, reported The Wall Street Journal. Sources have said Bank of America’s (NYSE:BAC) president and CEO Brian Moynihan and Citigroup’s (NYSE:C) CEO Vikram Pandit have gone so far as to publicly argue against the downgrades.

The U.K. has slipped back into a recession for the second time since the financial crisis. Its first quarter GDP declined a preliminary 0.2 percent on a quarterly basis after a fourth quarter drop of 0.3 percent. According to Markit’s Chris Williamson, the “underlying strength of the economy is probably much more robust,” but that the data will still affect confidence and the U.K. will tumble into a real recession.

In March, China’s foreign exchange reserves fell $4.69 billion to $3.305 trillion, representing the first monthly contraction since December. Credit Agricole CIB analyst Dariusz Kowalczyk said this drop showed increased efforts to curb the yuan’s value. He added that the People’s Bank of China had intervened to diminish the currency’s value through monthly yuan sales in the first quarter, reversing a pattern in the previous three months when intervention supported the currency.