Who says January’s a long month? This week starts slow, but we’ll end it with a full-fledged Jobs Week for February. Tuesday ushers in new JOLTS data for December, Wednesday brings us private-sector ADP (ADP) payroll totals for this month (along with the latest Fed decision on interest rates), and Friday is the big non-farm payroll survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). All of the forecast numbers are expected to tick down in the labor market, aside from the Unemployment Rate, which is expected to lift back up slightly to 3.8%.
In addition, our new week also features several marquee names of the Tech industry reporting earnings: Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL) on Tuesday, Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) on Thursday — all after the closing bell, as per normal. These major firms are all expecting growth on both top and bottom lines, year over year, led by anticipated earnings growth of +285% from Zacks Rank #2 (Buy)-rated Amazon, and +15% revenues growth year over year from Zacks Rank #2-rated Microsoft. (In other news, Amazon is no longer pursuing the acquisition for iRobot, citing antitrust issues, sending the smaller stock down -20% at this hour.)
Elsewhere, there will be a bevy of other reports hitting the tape this week, from Case-Shiller home prices to Consumer Confidence to Q4 Productivity to S&P and ISM Manufacturing. We also look for fresh Q4 earnings reports from across the spectrum of sectors, from AMD (AMD) to General Motors (GM) to Mondelez (MDLZ) to Pfizer (PFE) to Snapchat (SNAP) and Starbucks (SBUX) — and that’s just tomorrow!
Off near-term lows on January 18th, three of the four major stock market indices have rebounded into positive territory year-to-date. Only the Russell 2000 is still -3% from the start of this year’s trading, though that’s up from -6% on January 18th. The small-cap index, heavy in regional bank representation, needs three relatively strong trading days to finish the month in the green, along with the others which are already there.
We do not expect Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decision to be any factor at all on trading behavior this week. Even among those analysts who still believe — or wish for — six interest rate cuts between now and the end of the year do not foresee one coming this early. Most of these folks look toward early March for the first cut, though this would likely take much weaker numbers in the economy before the Fed would risk loosening the monetary screws.
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