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Economic Data Deluge

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This morning, ahead of the market open, we take something of a breather. There are no major economic releases expected today at all, in between plenty of new data reported both earlier this week and the days to come. Next week, we look for even fewer signals toward influencing stock markets here at the end of calendar 2019.

What we’ve seen so far is slightly better-than-expected results in the Empire State Index, PMI Services, the Homebuilders Index, Housing Starts, Building Permits and Job Openings. Where we’ve seen slightly underperforming data is in PMI Manufacturing, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization.

Important data yet to come this week include Thursday’s usual Initial and Continuing Jobless Claims, a new Philly Fed survey, Current Account Deficit, Existing Home Sales, Personal Income, Consumer Spending and a third and final read on Q3 GDP, which last rested at 2.1%. Thus far in Q4, we’ve seen either as-expected cooling in things like industrials and domestic goods producing, offset by higher-than-expected employment gains and subsequent strong consumer behavior.

This is why, even with major U.S. stock indexes continuing to ride all-time highs, pre-market futures are again up modestly a half hour prior to today’s market open. Should economic data stay the course (more or less), we can expect the “melt up” we’ve seen recently to stay its course.

Baked into this cake, by the way, is the almost certain impeachment of President Trump, which is expected to be made official by the U.S. House of Representatives today or early tomorrow. The president is accused of abusing the power of his office and obstructing the congressional investigation into his administration’s operations in the country of Ukraine. The vote is expected to largely follow party lines, with no Republicans likely to impeach the head of their party on these charges.

Also FedEx (FDX - Free Report)  has posted disappointing results in its Q2 2020 quarter, with $2.51 per share well off the pace of $2.79 expected, and far down from the $4.03 per share reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $17.32 missed the Zacks consensus by 1.1%, and were down $50 million from a year ago. Shares have fallen off the table in today’s pre-market, down more than 7% so far.

This marks the 5th miss in the past 6 quarters for the logistics and delivery giant. This is partially due to lower full-year 2020 guidance, which concludes in May of next year. For more on FDX’s earnings, click here.

 


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