Q2 Earnings Season and Fortunes of the U.S. Market

Monday, July 18, 2016

Q2 earnings season turns up the heat today as big banks and now major tech firms begin reporting quarterly earnings results. Bank of America BAC performed better than expected on both top and bottom lines, following overall solid reports from Wall Street financials last week. Toy maker Hasbro HAS also reported a positive earnings surprise before the bell this morning.

Though Bank of America's profit was down from a year ago, and the company cited continued lower interest rates as a main reason behind this. For Hasbro, its franchise products from Star Wars and Frozen continued to sell well, and the company topped expectations for both profits and revenues.

After the bell today we expect Q2 earnings results from Netflix NFLX, IBM IBM and Yahoo YHOO, which looks to regain headlines on potential news about how the company may be broken up going forward. We also look toward earnings results from VMWare VMW following today's market close.

Pre-market indexes are once again up this morning, after 4 straight days and 3 consecutive weeks of market gains. As of now, the Dow is up 36 points, Nasdaq is up 11+ and S&P 500 up nearly 6 points.

We must consider ourselves quite fortunate from this respect, what with the deadly aftermath following a wanton truck attack in Nice, France late last week that killed 84 followed by a failed coup attempt in Turkey where 300 died. No fewer than 6000 people have now been arrested in Turkey as a result. These are the kind of events that put things like Brexit far in the rearview mirror. These also shine a spotlight on the U.S. stock market as being a near-term safe haven for investors around the world.

Speaking of Great Britain for a moment, U.K.-based chip designer ARM Holdings ARMH is reportedly being sold to Japan's Softbank for $32 billion, a 40+% premium to ARMH's Friday stock price. You'll recall Softbank is the major firm that bought a majority stake in Sprint S 4 years ago and Supercell since.

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor