Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, January 12, 2022.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
US stock futures were little changed on Monday night as traders braced for the latest round of corporate earnings reports.
Futures contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures were up slightly and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.1%. US markets were closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday.
The shortened trading week will feature quarterly reports from 35 companies in S&P 500, consists of Bank of America, UnitedHealth and Netflix. Goldman Sachs is also set to post its most recent quarterly figures on Tuesday before the alarm goes off.
Big bank Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup kicks off earnings season on Friday, with three companies posting better-than-expected profits. However, the market reaction to those results was mixed. Shares of Wells Fargo rose on that result, but JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup fell.
Overall, 26 S&P 500 companies have reported fourth-quarter earnings so far, according to Refinitiv. Of those companies, nearly 77% reported results that beat analysts’ expectations.
“The economic backdrop for the fourth quarter was positive, delivering good margins and revenue growth,” CIO Mark Haefele of UBS Global Wealth Management said in a note last week. “Guidance from companies could also indicate that demand continues to grow strongly into 2022, even as omicrons are disrupting some business right now.”
The spread of the Covid-19 omicron variant has raised questions about the state of the global economic recovery since news of its discovery was announced. Several countries and regions have restored lockdowns and other social distancing measures to contain the outbreak.
However, Recent data suggest that the spread may be narrowing. In New York, the seven-day average of new daily cases has fallen since hitting a record earlier this month, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. In Maryland, the number of daily infections is down 27% from last week. Cases are also falling in South Africa and the UK.
A promising start to the new year
Monday’s move comes as stocks have struggled to start 2022.
The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are all down for the year on concerns about a recent increase in inflation and the prospect of tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve.
Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker told CNBC last week that the central bank could raise interest rates three or four times this year. He notes that inflation is “more persistent than we thought before. “
Technology, the largest sector in the S&P 500 by market capitalization, has been particularly hard hit this year, falling more than 4%. Big Tech names like Meta Platforms, Amazon, Netflix, Alphabet and Apple have all failed this year.
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