The Market In 5 Minutes: Morgan Stanley Beats Estimates, Disney And Netflix Get Big Upgrades

Macro Focus

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 46 points to 19,786.00, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures fell 8 points to 2,264.50. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 index slipped 16.25 points to 5,045.00.

Oil prices traded higher as Brent crude futures gained 1.07 percent to trade at $56.46 per barrel, while US WTI crude futures also rose 1.34 percent to trade at $53.86 a barrel

USA NY Empire State Manufacturing Index for Jan 6.50 vs 8.50 consensus estimate. The prior reading was 9.00.

Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard will speak in Washington, D.C. at 10:00 a.m. ET.
The Treasury is set to auction 3-and 6-month bills at 11:30 a.m. ET.
San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John C. Williams is set to speak at Sacramento State University in Calif. at 6:00 p.m. ET.

BZ News Desk Focus

Morgan Stanley MS Q4 EPS $0.81 vs $0.65 Est, Revenue $9.0B vs $8.5B Est.
UnitedHealth UNH Q4 EPS $2.11 vs $2.07 Est, Revenue $47.5B vs $47.3B Est

Q4 earnings season is underway, and among the many companies expected share their results this week are three transportation giants. Expectations are somewhat mixed, based on the analysts' consensus forecasts, even as the Trump rally rolled on in the period, with his promises of increased infrastructure spending. Modest results are expected from rail leader CSX CSX, which during the period Barron's said could benefit from Trump's election. Mixed results are anticipated from Union Pacific UNP, which disappointed in its most recent earnings report. United Continental UAL is expected to say that both earnings and revenue slipped from a year ago. In the quarter, it came to light that Warren Buffett had taken stakes in United and other airlines.

Sell-Side Themes

JPMorgan upgraded American Express AXP and Michaels MIK to Overweight and downgraded OneMain Holdings OMF to Neutral.

Sell-Side's Most Noteworthy Calls

UBS downgraded Twitter TWTR to Hold.
Stifel downgraded Nordstrom JWN to Hold.
JPMorgan downgraded Chipotle CMG to Neutral.
Mizuho upgraded Netflix NFLX to Buy.
Goldman Sachs upgraded Disney DIS to Buy.

Deal Talk

British American Tobacco BTI and Reynolds American RAI said they had agreed to a sweetened offer of $49.4 billion from BAT for the 57.8 percent of Reynolds that it doesn’t already own.

Essilor ESLOY and Delfin announced Sunday the signing of an agreement under which the companies would merge with Luxottica LUX. Under the terms of the agreement, Delfin will contribute its entire stake of approximately 62 percent in Luxottica to Essilor in return for newly-issued Essilor shares to be approved by the Essilor shareholders meeting, on the basis of the Exchange Ratio of 0.461 Essilor shares for 1 Luxottica share.

Noble Energy NBL and Clayton Williams Energy CWEI announced Monday that the Boards of Directors of both companies have unanimously approved and the companies have executed a definitive agreement under which Noble Energy will acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Clayton Williams Energy for $2.7 billion, or $139 per share in Noble Energy stock and cash. The deal is expected to close in Q2 of 2017.

In The News

Prime Minister Theresa May declared in a speech Tuesday that Britain doesn't want “partial membership” in the European Union “or anything that leaves us half-in, half-out.”

President-elect Donald Trump criticized a cornerstone of House Republicans’ corporate-tax plan, which they had pitched as an alternative to his proposed import tariffs, creating another point of contention between the incoming president and congressional allies.

Blogosphere

Samsung shows constitutional monarchies can work: "The events of the past few months have been a baleful reminder that, despite their antiquated nature, hereditary monarchies have advantages over more meritocratic systems.No, we're not talking about anything going on in Washington -- it's Seoul that's putting ruling houses in a good light."

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