Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Monday, April 1st, and I'm'm your host Kim Khan. Our top story so far

Apple's iPhone saw unit sales drop 4% year over year in February with most of the declines

concentrated in the US, India, and China.

That's according to checks by UBS. Global iPhone sales for the month total 17.4

million down from 18.1 million in February 2023.

Weak carrier upgrade rates combined with the success of Samsung's S-24 series

prompted a 9% drop in U.S. sales.

Meanwhile, China's local smartphone brands continue to gain market share, prompting a 16% year-over-year drop.

Sales in India are also down 13% year-over-year.

UBS says Apple will sell about 51 million iPhones during the quarter ended March 31st, down from 56 million last year.

In addition, based on supply chain analysis, Loop Capital now projects that Apple's revenue and EPS will decline in 2024.

That would be the first drop since 2016.

Loop cut its price target to $170.

In today's trading, action is volatile as the market digests inflows of cash to

cut off the second quarter. The Nasdaq and S&P are higher than the Dow is in the red.

Bond market trading is more definitive, with rates moving higher

following US manufacturing data. The 10-year Treasury yield is up 10 basis points back above 4.3%

to a two-week high. While the March S&P Global PMI arrived a little lower

than expected at 51.9, it still remained in expansion territory and the more

closely watched ISM manufacturing index showed expansion for the first time in 17 months.

The index rose to 50.3 above expectations of 48.3 and up from 47.8 in February.

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