Earnings, GDP and Other Can't Miss Items This Week

Last week was a wild week in the markets with the S&P 500 ($SPX) (SPY) closing up over 1%. This was bolstered mostly by Nvidia's (NVDA) blowout earnings report where, in the following days, it traded over $800/share valuing it at over 2 trillion dollars on Friday. 

That news took control for the week and overshadowed almost all of the other news. The only other thing that seemed to really move prices at all were the FOMC meeting minutes, but even those were muted compared to what Nvidia did to prices.

This week we have quite a few news releases to keep an eye on in addition to some smaller earnings that are due out this week.

Here are 5 things to watch this week in the Market.

Earnings

It is doubtful that we will see anything close to what we did last week with Nvidia in this week's earnings, but there are still several names that are due out this week that are worth watching. First up is Lowe’s (LOW) which reports Tuesday morning before the market opens. This name is similar to Home Depot (HD) so it will be interesting to see if they have similar results and a similar guidance on future quarters. This can be important because if both large construction retailers are seeing a decrease in traffic and spending it could be indicative of a wind down in housing projects and the economy in general.

TJX Companies (TJX) and Salesforce (CRM) report on Wednesday before and after trading hours respectively. TJX are retail stores so how they guide future earnings and what they are seeing in their retail locations could be an excellent indication of how healthy the retail sector actually is. Salesforce is a huge Business-to-business cloud software provider so it could be a good leading indicator of business health in the country. Finally, Anheuser-Busch (BUD) reports on Thursday before the opening. They were embroiled in controversy for the last earnings call and have since signed the UFC and a few other larger names to try and recover the brand.

Consumer Confidence

The CB Consumer Confidence survey is our Tuesday at 10 am. This is a survey that gives a general indication of how households feel about the overall economic conditions in the country. With all eyes back on when and if rate cuts will happen, a strong reading here might cause some selling in the overall market. A weaker reading on the other hand might be positive news as it could greenlight a rate cut earlier than expected.

Preliminary GDP

This GDP reading is slightly less impactful than the Advanced reading, which is the first for the quarter, but still important nonetheless. If the economy is still robust then it could put some additional pressure on the Fed to cool things off, this could be seen as a negative by the market. If on the other hand, this comes in weaker than anticipated it could be a positive. Either way, with this being an election year in the US, it could put a directional bias on the reporting.

Core PCE

With inflation rearing back up last month and this month, PCE could be a very volatile release showing the extent of price changes on strictly consumer products. If this comes in higher than expected, which is already higher than recent releases at 0.4%, we could see some pressure on both the markets and the Fed as the question becomes what will it take to break inflation. If we come in lower than expected, or even better, negative, it's possible the market rallies on consumer prices finally falling.

G20 Meetings

The G20 meetings are happening Wednesday and Thursday this week and could have some sporadic impact on the market. The meetings themselves are closed-door, but many of the members talk to the press between meetings and since this is a direct policy-making body for interest rates, any news from here could produce some serious volatility. 

Best of luck this week and don’t forget to check out my daily options article.