Coming off of a day of digestion that saw US indices shrug off early losses and finish pretty much flat, US equities have been marching forward again this morning. NASDAQ futures are up 0.7% while Dow futures are up 0.2%. Europe is also broadly in the green this morning with the FTSE up 0.3% and the Dax up 0.1%. Hong Kong returned to trading overnight with a 2.3% gain, and the return to trading from Lunar New Year holidays also appears to be helping WTI Crude Oil which is up 1.6%.
A new round of positive earnings reports and other corporate news appears to have helped to ignite today’s rally as well. Tesla Motors ($1.19 vs street $1.13, up 8.3% premarket), Levi Strauss ($0.34 vs street $0.29, up 6.6% premarket) beat expectations overnight along with IBM, CSX, Lam Research, Comcast and others. MasterCard, Visa and Intel are set to report results later today. In addition, Chevron announced a share buyback and a dividend increase ahead of its quarterly report tomorrow.
Economic news has also been supportive this morning. US Q4 GDP (2.9% vs street 2.6% and previous 3.2%), initial jobless claims (186K vs street 205K), and durable goods orders (5.6% vs street 2.5%), all came in better than expected. US new home sales are due at 10:00 am EST. Tomorrow brings US Core PCE inflation, personal income/spending, and pending home sales.
SIA Wealth In The Media:
Chief Market Strategist Colin Cieszynski recently appeared on BNN Bloomberg where he spoke about tactical rotation in equity markets, today’s Bank of Canada decision, earnings season and recent technical action in the S&P/TSX Composite Index.