Tech Earnings Ahead

Pre-market futures are off their early morning highs, but still mostly in positive territory. Cease-fire talks look promising, as Iran reportedly is sending negotiators to Pakistan and plans are for an Israel-Lebanon summit in the U.S. But the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and even though Q1 earnings continue to come in strong, there remain plenty of question marks on the horizon.

The Nasdaq is by far the outperformer among major indexes at this hour, +315 points or +1.17%, partly on strong Q1 numbers from Intel INTC yesterday after the close. The S&P 500 is +22 points, +0.31% and the small-cap Russell 2000 is +10, +0.37%. Only the blue-chip Dow is in the red currently: -70 points, -0.14%, largely on IBM’s IBM reported struggles in the software space in its earnings results yesterday.

Earnings Reports at a Glance

Procter & Gamble PG surpassed expectations on both top and bottom lines in its fiscal Q3 report this morning. Earnings of $1.59 per share beat the Zacks consensus by 3 cents, while revenues of $21.24 billion in the quarter outpaced estimates by +3.5%, and nicely ahead of the $19.78 billion reported in the year-ago quarter. 

Oilfield services major SLB SLB, formerly Schlumberger, beat estimates on its bottom line by a penny, and revenues of $8.32 billion were ahead of projections by +1.1%. But the high valuation of the stock (+42.6% year to date) is playing a factor in the stock’s -3.6% selloff ahead of the open. 

What to Expect from the Stock Market Today

At 10am ET, the final print for U.S. Consumer Sentiment from the University of Michigan comes out. This highly respected metric saw an -11% drop month over month in the earlier release, to a record-low 47.6. Expectations are for this to bump up a percentage point or so, but still in relatively weak territory. 

Business conditions dropped -20% in the last report, while inflation expectations jumped +100 basis points (bps) to +4.8%. We look for these figures to moderate somewhat, as well, but the early stages of the Iran war were fraught with negative sentiment. We don’t expect revisions to completely erase this narrative.

What’s In Store Next Week on Wall Street

Q1 earnings season accelerates further next week, featuring results from Alphabet GOOGL, Amazon AMZN, Meta Platforms META and Microsoft MSFT, among many others — and these all on Tuesday afternoon. We’ll also see housing data from Case-Shiller and Housing Starts and Building Permits, along with a new Trade Balance and Leading Economic Indicators (LEI).

The marquee reports will be the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting concluding Wednesday (spoiler alert: the Fed will not be moving rates either direction) and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) released the following day. This will likely be Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s final meeting of his 8-year tenure, depending what happens with current nominee Kevin Warsh. PCE is generally considered to be the Fed’s favored gauge of inflation, but the Fed will be drawing on this report from the prior month.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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