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U.S. equity futures edged higher Tuesday, while Treasury yields and the dollar held steady, as investors braced for a series of top tier corporate earnings while eyeing the start of the Federal Reserve’s two day policy meeting in Washington.
Stocks finished modestly higher last night, with broader gains from a host of sectors outside the megacap tech names, as markets eases into a hectic week on Wall Street that will include jobs data, tomorrow’s Fed rate decision, four megacap tech updates and Friday’s crucial July jobs report.
Earnings are likely to take center stage today, however, with a host of bluechip updates prior to the opening bell and highly-anticipated reports from Microsoft (MSFT) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) after the close of trading.
Around 171 companies will report this week, the busiest of the season, as analysts look for collective second quarter profits to rise 12.1% from last year to just over $500 billion.
Investors will be closely tracking comments on AI spending, consumer demand and cloud computing growth when Microsoft posts its fourth quarter earnings after the close of trading.
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In the bond market, yields are holding steady as the Fed kicks off its two day policy meeting in Washington, with benchmark 10-year notes trading at 4.174% and 2-year notes pegged at 4.396%.
The U.S. dollar index, meanwhile, was marked 0.007% higher against a basket of its global peers and trading at 104.569
Few traders expect any surprise from the Fed when it unveils its statement at 2:00 pm Eastern time tomorrow, but most expect Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues to guide the market towards at least two rate cuts between now and the end of the year, the first of which is almost certain to come in September.
The Labor Department will kick off a series of job market data releases today with its June Jolts report, a closely-tracked tally of openings, quits and wage gains that the Fed relies on to calibrate its inflation projections.
Economists expect the report to show just over 8 million positions went unfilled last month, down from around 8.14 million in May.
Heading into the start of the trading day on Wall Street, futures contracts tied to the S&P 500 suggest a modest 10 point opening bell gain, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average called 65 points higher.
Related: Big tech earnings could save market rally or trigger summer slump
The tech-focused Nasdaq, meanwhile, is called 25 points higher, with early declines for Nvidia (NVDA) and Tesla (TSLA) holding down gains.
More Wall Street Analysts:
Analyst revisits Nvidia stock price target after Blackwell checksAnalysts prescribe new Walgreens stock price targets after earningsAnalyst revises Facebook parent stock price target in AI arms race
In Europe, a stronger-than-expected reading for second quarter GDP, which showed the world’s biggest economic bloc expanding at a 0.3% clip, gave regional stocks a boost. The gains were tempered, however, by a reading that showed its largely economy, Germany, contracted by 0.1% over the three months ending in June.
The region-wide Stoxx 600 was marked 0.3% higher in early trading, with Britain’s FTSE 100 slipping 0.25% in London thanks in part to muted global commodity prices.
Overnight in Asia, the Bank of Japan started its two day policy meeting in Tokyo, where officials are likely to discuss a tapering of the central bank’s monthly bond purchases that could signal only its second rate hike in 17 years.
The Nikkei 225 was marked 0.15% higher by the close of trading, with the region-wide MSCI ex-Japan index falling 0.49%.
Related: Veteran fund manager sees world of pain coming for stocks
