After enjoying a nine-week winning streak to start 2024, stocks returned to winning ways last week.
All three major indexes rose in the first full week of trading of the year, led by a 3% gain for the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) ended the week's trading down less than 13 points, or about 0.3 % away from a record high. At the end of the week, Microsoft (MSFT) also overtook Apple (AAPL) as the most valuable company in the world.
Next week, investors will look to maintain momentum in a week of shortened holidays.
With U.S. markets closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Wednesday's financial sector results and retail sales are likely to serve as key catalysts for the calendar.
Retail sales are expected to rise 0.4% in December, up from November's 0.3% gain, as U.S. consumers continue to deliver surprisingly durable economic growth.
Michael Gapen, an economist at Bank of America, wrote that the company expected the government to make seasonal adjustments to December data that would result in “robust” retail sales.
“If we take a step back,” Gapen added, “we think spending is healthy, but not increasing.” Currently, the company expects fourth-quarter GDP to grow at an annual rate of 1.2%. will move towards.
Elsewhere on the economic calendar, Thursday's initial jobless claims data and a look at consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan on Friday will warrant a close look from investors.
Aside from the earnings and economic calendar, Monday's Iowa caucuses will mark the official start of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. On the geopolitical front, rising tensions in the Red Sea – after the US and its allies carried out airstrikes in Yemen on consecutive days last week – are drawing increasing attention from investors.
A sign supporting Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is displayed in Adel, Iowa, on January 11, 2024. Iowa voters are preparing for the Iowa Republican Party presidential primary on Jan. 15. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) (Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)
Next week's key earnings reports are expected on Tuesday morning. Investment banks Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) are set to report results after a challenging year for their dealmaking business included in their results.
The story goes on
Ken Leon, research director at CFRA, told Yahoo Finance Live on Friday: “I think the investment banking story [next week] will be once again that we reached the bottom of the cycle last year.”
On Friday, major money banks including JPMorgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), Bank of America (BAC) and Citi (C) all reported their fourth-quarter and full-year results, with JPMorgan's record annual profit reaching nearly $50 billion. Dollars and Citi's plans took center stage. Highlights include the loss of 20,000 jobs and additional costs of $2.5 billion.
Friday's earnings season opener also featured results from Delta Air Lines (DAL) that disappointed investors, sending the airline's shares down nearly 9% and dragging down rivals United Airlines (UAL) and American Airlines (AAL). .
Mixed signals on inflation
Last week's inflation data showed consumer prices were firmer than forecast in December, while producer prices fell more than expected.
In a note to clients Friday, Nancy Vanden Houten, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, called Red Sea-related disruptions an “upside risk” to the firm's inflation forecasts.
While investors focused on how each additional piece of inflation data could change the Federal Reserve's plans to cut interest rates this year, last week's data showed a slight increase in belief that that process will begin in March.
Data from CME Group shows investors are pricing in a 77% chance the Fed will cut interest rates by 0.25% in March, compared with a 65% chance expressed last week after a strong jobs report in December.
“We have adjusted our baseline assumptions and expect the FOMC to phase in cuts at every other meeting starting in March, two meetings earlier than before,” Barclays economists led by Jonathan Millar wrote on Friday.
He added: “This primarily reflects our downward revisions to core PCE price inflation, which significantly increases the likelihood that the FOMC will continue to see relatively weak monthly readings from this metric through February. Nevertheless, we consider the result in March to be a much closer forecast than.” The probability that the prices will be priced in by the markets is around 80%.
Barclays also expects interest rates to move “much slower” than markets are pricing in – Millar and his team expect interest rates to fall 1% by the end of 2024, with markets expecting around 1% worth of rate cuts Expect .5%. The current key interest rate is in a range of 5.25% to 5.50%.
Earnings topics to keep an eye on
The financial sector was in the spotlight as earnings season began.
But the big story for markets in 2023 centered on technology stocks, and particularly the “Magnificent Seven” megacap leaders, which drove the Nasdaq to a gain of over 40%.
Results from these names and other tech giants will be announced later this month.
And how this sector performs will be of particular interest to investors as valuations for the technology sector (XLK) have risen in anticipation of an AI-driven earnings cycle.
At the end of 2023, data from Bank of America showed that the technology sector's forward P/E ratio was 27, the second highest of all S&P 500 sectors – only real estate (XLRE), where valuations rose while the sector's earnings fell sharply, with a higher valuation traded (39). The S&P 500 as a whole was trading at 19.8 times next year's expected earnings.
With technology accounting for more than 28% of the S&P 500's market cap, these results will have an outsized impact on the overall direction of the index.
In a note published Friday, FactSet's John Butters highlighted that S&P 500 companies' negative forecasts for fourth-quarter results were slightly above recent five- and 10-year averages, with 111 members of the index warning the Street about impending results. When looking at these alerts by sector, technology stands out.
FactSet data shows that 25 members of the technology sector warned that fourth-quarter earnings would fall short of forecasts, more than the 10-year average of 19 members of the sector that issued a similar warning. In total, there are 64 S&P 500 members in the industry.
Now, when it comes to the names of the Magnificent Seven in particular, the nuance becomes challenging at the sector level – Meta Platforms (META) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) are components in the Communication Services space (XLC), while Amazon (AMZN) and Tesla (TSLA) are classified as Consumer Discretionary (XLY) names.
But all of these stocks are components of the Nasdaq, the indicator of investor sentiment in the market.
And with “tech trading” taking on a monolithic role for many investors over the past year, the fourth-quarter earnings season party won't really get started until reports from these names arrive.
Weekly calendar
Monday
Economic data: The markets are closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Merits: The markets are closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Tuesday
Economic data: NY Fed Empire Manufacturing, January (-4 expected, previously -14.5)
Merits: Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), PNC Financial (PNC), Interactive Brokers (IBKR)
Wednesday
Economic data: Retail Sales, December (+0.4% expected, +0.3% previous); Retail sales, excluding auto and gasoline, December (+0.3% expected, +0.6% previous); MBA Mortgage Applications, week of January 12 (+9.9% previous); Import Price Index, December (-0.6% expected, previously -0.4%); Export Price Index, December (-0.7% expected, previously -0.9%); Industrial production, December (0% expected, +0.2% previous); Corporate inventories, November (-0.1% expected, previously -0.1%); Federal Reserve Beige Book
Merits: Charles Schwab (SCHW), Alcoa (AA), Discover (DFS), US Bancorp (USB), Kinder Morgan (KMI), Citizens Financial (CFG), Prologis (PLD)
Thursday
Economic data: Initial jobless claims, week of January 13 (205,000 expected, previously 202,000); Housing starts, December (-8.7% expected, +14.8% previous); Building permits, December (+0.9% expected, -2.5% previous); Philadelphia Fed January Business Outlook (-7 previous, -12.8 previous)
Merits: PPG (PPG), Fastenal (FAST), Bank OZK (OZK), KeyCorp (KEY), JB Hunt (JBHT), M&T Bank (MTB), Northern Trust (NTRS)
Friday
Economic data: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment, Preliminary January (69.3 expected, 69.7 so far); University of Michigan 1-Year Inflation Expectations, January (previously 3.1%); Existing property sales, December (+0.3% expected, +0.8% previous)
Merits: Travelers (TRV), State Street (STT), Regions Financial (RF), Ally (ALLY), Comerica (CMA), Fifth Third (FITB), Huntington Bancshares (HBAN)
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