Good morning,
Stocks have been in a general downtrend so far this month, pressured by rising interest rates and trade tensions with China. Despite volatile trading last week, things stabilized (with the S&P 500 closing essentially unchanged) as healthy earnings reports by some big name companies supported the market. Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs, Netflix, Procter & Gamble, and UnitedHealth Group all posted strong earnings numbers – validating the belief it will be another solid earnings season.
Looking at results so far, with 17% of companies in the S&P 500 having already reported, 80% have reported a positive earnings surprise (which is above the 5-year average of 71%) and 64% have reported a positive sales surprise (which is above the 5-year average of 59%), according to data from FactSet. The flow of earnings releases really picks up in the week ahead.
This week is the busiest quarter of earnings season, with 1/3rd of the companies in the S&P scheduled to report. McDonald’s, 3M, Verizon, Caterpillar, United Technologies, AT&T, Visa, Microsoft, Boeing, Alphabet, Merck, Amazon, Intel, and Colgate-Palmolive are just a sampling of the earnings reports we’ll see this week! As always, contact us with any questions you may have or if you would like to set up a meeting with us.
All the best,
Southport Station Financial Management, LLC