Wall Street Digest Earnings, Major Economic Data This Week

The latest trend in day-to-day stock market index trading looks to be the Nasdaq filling deep holes dug in the previous month while the Dow and S&P 500 basically tread water.

Certainly, this is what’s happening this morning: The Dow is -3 points and the S&P 500 -2, while the Nasdaq is up a modest +17 points at this hour. The Nasdaq is up +5.6% over the past five trading days.

It is a big day ahead with both economic prints and Q4 earnings reports. After today’s opening bell, traders look for both Markit PMI that printed 55.5 versus expected 55 and ISM Manufacturing report for January with 57.6 versus expected 57.4.

Wall Street also digests Job Openings and, perhaps more interestingly these days, Job Quits for December. Also Construction Spending for December will be released. After today’s closing bell, there is also a smorgasbord of Q4 data: Alphabet GOOGL, Starbucks SBUX, General Motors GM, PayPal PYPL and Gilead GILD, among others, report earnings.

Ahead of the open, Exxon Mobil XOM beat Q4 estimates on both top and bottom lines: earnings of $2.05 per share outpaced the $1.96 in the Zacks consensus, with $84.97 billion in revenues, above the estimated $82.88 billion and more than +80% year over year. Its $48 billion in cash-flow operations is its biggest in a decade. With oil prices currently at their highest in seven years, it was expected the Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company would post a healthy quarter. This marks Exxon’s sixth-straight earnings beat.

Atlanta-based homebuilder PulteGroup PHM also posted Q4 earnings this morning, with $2.51 per share beating the Zacks consensus $2.29 and the $1.49 per share reported a year ago. Revenues of $4.36 billion were +4.68% over estimates and far ahead of the $2.19 billion from Q4 2021. Shares of the Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock had been down -7.8% year to date, and are now +3.6% in today’s pre-market.


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