Wall Street Awaits PCE/Core PCE Data
It’s another eventful week for trade participants: even though it feels as if Q4 earnings season is winding down, we still expect results from important companies this week like Salesforce (CRM), Hewlett Packard (HPQ), (HPE) in the latter half and Zoom Video (ZM) after the closing bell today. For economic prints, the all-important Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) on Thursday will take center stage, as it is the Fed’s favored metric for tracking inflation.
But we’ll also see Durable Goods Orders, Case-Shiller Home Prices, Consumer Confidence, the first revision to Q4 GDP, Trade Balance, Retail/Wholesale Inventories S&P PMI and ISM Manufacturing and Construction Spending reports all hit the tape this week. So far, between Fed meetings we’ve seen overall stronger results than expected for the economy as a whole. We’re still three weeks out from the next FOMC meeting on monetary policy, but if numbers are roughly in-line with what we’ve seen so far, there’s almost no chance for a rate cut in March.
New Home Sales for January are expected to be released after the market open today, with expectations up a bit from the previous month — from 664K new seasonally adjusted, annualized units to 680K. However, this would remain at the lower levels we’ve seen over the five years, with a big spike in new home prices as people repositioned their families during the Covid pandemic. Since then, supply chain issues sent input prices through the roof, and though these have abated over the past year we haven’t seen a big rebound in new home sales yet.
Ahead of today’s open, Domino’s Pizza (DPZ) reported Q4 numbers that were mixed overall: earnings of $4.48 per share beat the Zacks consensus by nine cents — continuing the long run of quarterly earnings beats — on revenues of $1.4 billion which were light of expectations by -0.93%. The pizza delivery giant also announced a $1 billion share buyback and a 25% dividend hike, which has helped move Domino’s stock price up +6% in early trading. Quietly, Domino’s shares have risen nearly +50% over the past year.
Pre-market futures closed mixed on Friday but are up somewhat again this morning. It’s not rabid bullishness we’re seeing, but a lingering permissive environment where the economy continues to outperform, even as interest rates remain higher for longer. The Dow is +0.05% at this hour, the S&P 500 is +0.09% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq — +8% year to date with 16,000 back in its sights — is +0.20% currently.
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
HP Inc. (HPQ) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Salesforce Inc. (CRM) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Domino's Pizza Inc (DPZ) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (ZM) : Free Stock Analysis Report
