Economic & Earnings Commentary
Where we last left off in this space, the fear in the stock market revolved around whether there would be a government shutdown at midnight Saturday. Actually the trading session on Friday seemed to look past this notion: the Dow rose +1.18%, the Nasdaq +1.03% and the S&P 500 +1.09%.
Now that this crisis has been averted — Congress eliminated some expenditures from the budget, but it passed and was signed by President Biden — pre-market futures are lower on the Dow at this hour, -198 points, and the S&P, -10. The Nasdaq is currently +10 points.
As Zacks Senior Analyst John Blank, PhD states in this morning’s A Christmas Holiday Trading Week: Global Week Ahead, “With a four-day trading week, and a major Western holiday, don’t expect much to stir U.S. or global share markets in terms of macro data.” Thus, we’ll take our reports where they are this week, but we don’t expect much to move the needle between now at the first of the year.
Consumer Confidence After the Opening Bell
There is one economic report out this Monday, and it comes a half hour after the bell rings in the new trading day: U.S. Consumer Confidence. We’ve bounced up from a sub-100 read a few months back to 111.7 in November, and this is supposed to climb to 113.0. Should this come about, it will be the highest level of consumer confidence we’ll have seen since mid-2023.
The Covid pandemic took this index way down from all-time highs, and only during the brief “Great Reopening” period did we see this get back up to those 120+ highs. Consumer confidence has been wallowing a bit ever since, but with a deregulatory environment promised for the businessworld from an incoming Trump administration next month, this is starting to look a bit brighter.
What to Expect from This Trading Week
With Christmas falling in the middle of the week, we expect trading volumes to be relatively low. Economic prints are likewise slim in number overall this week, with Durable Goods Orders and New Home Sales — both for November — out Tuesday morning, Weekly Jobless Claims Thursday morning and an Advanced Trade Balance in Goods on Friday.
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
