Pre-Markets Begins Shorter Week Slowly

Tuesday, February 17th, 2026

Pre-market indexes begin our holiday-shortened trading week bouncing around in the red at this hour. Following a Presidents Day respite, we look to be slowly rolling off the gains we’d attained about a week ago. The Dow is -81 points at this hour, -0.16%, with the S&P 500 -28, -0.41%, the Nasdaq -216, -0.87% and the small-cap Russell 2000 -8, -0.33%.
 

Empire State Manufacturing Moderates in February

A regional look at manufacturing in New York hits the tape this morning with an Empire State headline reaching +7.1 — slightly beneath the +10.0 expected and the unrevised +7.7 reported a month ago. The average level going back to the start of the century is +6.29, with the all-time high of +39 in April of 2004 and near-term high last November: 13.5. These are mild manufacturing numbers overall, but we’ve seen six positive months in the past eight.
 

Earnings This Morning at a Glance

Medical Devices giant Medtronic MDT outperformed fiscal Q3 estimates on both top and bottom lines this morning — earnings of $1.36 per share beat estimates by 3 cents, while revenues came in +1.35% higher than expected — but shares are down -3.5% in the pre-market anyway. Part of this may be due to the company bracing for tariff impacts in the quarters to come. For more on MDT’s earnings, click here.

Elsewhere, Detroit-based gas and electric utility DTE Energy DTE posted a strong earnings beat — $1.65 per share versus $1.52 anticipated — and shares are up +2.5% in today’s pre-market. Labcorp Holdings LH are flat in early trading so far on an earnings beat, $4.07 per share versus $3.95 projected, but missing slightly on revenues.
 

What to Expect After the Bell

A fresh Homebuilders Confidence survey comes out at 10am ET this morning, expected to tick up a point to 38 for the month of February. Moving in a positive direction is obviously good for business, but we compare this to the 39 reported in December, 42 in February of last year and a 56 back in July of 2023.

After today’s close, we’ll see new earnings results from luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers TOL and cybersecurity staple Palo Alto Networks PANW. Toll Brothers is expected to grow +17% on earnings year over year but -0.87% on revenues. Palo Alto looks for +14% growth on both top and bottom lines.
 

What’s Coming This Week: Walmart Earnings, PCE

Thursday morning brings us Walmart WMT earnings for Q4, effectively kicking off earnings season in the retail space. The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold)-rated biggest-of-the-big-box companies is expected to fetch +10.6% on earnings and +5.2% on revenues. Walmart has outperformed earnings estimates in three of its last four quarters.

We’ll also see heavy machinery maker John Deere DE report this week, along with auto dispenser Carvana CVNA and travel major Booking.com BKNG. We won’t see NVIDIA NVDA report quarterly results until next week, in case you were wondering.

This week also provides us more housing data, with Housing Starts and Building Permits out tomorrow morning and New Home Sales reporting Friday. But the biggest economic print this week will be the delayed Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report for December. This look in the rearview mirror looks to tick up month over month to +0.3% but remain at +2.8% year over year on headline, up to +2.9% on core.

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