Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading in New York City.
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Stock futures were little changed Monday as investors waited to assess whether the next batch of key corporate earnings could power the market to more records.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%. S&P 500 index futures rose 0.3%, while Nasdaq-100 futures gained 0.5%.
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Johnson & Johnson report their latest results on Tuesday before the market opens, while Morgan Stanley and United Airlines are set to release results Wednesday. Walgreens Boots Alliance, Netflix and Procter & Gamble are also scheduled to post earnings this week.
Those reports will come after JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo kicked off the third-quarter earnings season on a high note. The early signs of a recovery in banking profits helped push the broader market to all-time highs at the end of last week. The S&P 500 closed above 5,800 for the first time, while the blue-chip Dow also reached an all-time high.
So far, 30 S&P 500 companies have posted results, beating the earnings consensus by about 5% on average, according to Bank of America. That’s better than the 3% beat at this time last quarter. Still, Bernstein believes that this quarter’s year-over-year earnings per share growth rate will still come in “much lower” than last quarter’s.
Despite the market climbing to new heights, investors remain anxious against a backdrop of a closely-contested presidential election in three weeks, suddenly rising Treasury yields, uncertainty about the pace of Federal Reserve policy easing and escalating geopolitical risks in the Middle East.
Still, “the Big 4 macro tailwinds (stimulus, resilient growth, disinflation, and healthy corporate performance) are all still in place and they’re powerful enough to overcome rich valuations and geopolitical risks, keeping the SPX on an upward trajectory,” Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, said in a note Sunday.
The S&P 500 has gained nearly 22% this year, excluding reinvested dividends. The bull market recently turned two years old, and the benchmark has rallied nearly 63% in total since hitting a closing low in October 2022. Treasury yields have risen lately too, with the benchmark 10-year note yield, used to calculate everything from mortgages to auto loans, topping 4.1% last week.
On the data front, September retail sales and Sept. industrial production figures are out Thursday, followed by Sept. housing starts and building permits Friday.
