Oil's Bounce Lifts Stocks; Mixed Earnings Make for Soggy Reporting Round

Oil was pointing higher for a second session and that was good enough for Wall Street in Thursday’s early action. Add in the presumed benefits for export-heavy stocks from a slightly softer dollar and the tone was cautiously upbeat.

The improved mood follows a head-spinning session on Wednesday, when the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite (COMP) lagged but the S&P 500 (SPX), in figure 1, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJI) closed the day in the green. Oil prices got at least a short-term lift from a weaker dollar. Greenback selling intensified following a U.S. service-sector report on Wednesday that stirred some Street buzz for a slower-moving Federal Reserve. Wednesday’s stock-driving factors stuck around early Thursday.

Draghi’s Fightin’ Words. The challenge of mixed strategies among the globe’s major central banks became apparent again. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi fired back at a warning from Germany's Bundesbank that the ECB shouldn't overreact to a sharp drop in oil prices, MarketWatch and other financial media reported. Draghi warned that central banks "cannot be relaxed" in the face of a series of shocks to commodity prices. Cheaper oil and other "forces in the global economy" that are holding down consumer prices "should not lead to a permanently lower inflation rate," he said, according to the reports. "They do not justify inaction."
GoPro Guidance is a Miss. GoPro, Inc. GPRO fell sharply early Thursday, hitting a fresh lifetime low, after the action-camera company late Wednesday issued a Q4 loss and offered a forecast that fell short of Wall Street expectations. GoPro said it expects sales of $160 million to $180 million in the current quarter, far below average analyst expectations of $291 million, according to FactSet, and the company's full-year guidance of $1.35 billion to $1.5 billion was below analysts' expectations of $1.6 billion.

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