#PreMarket Primer: Friday, January 17: Banks Ruin Winning Streak

Blame Goldman Sachs and Citigroup for putting the breaks on the rally yesterday and Best Buy didn’t help either by reporting holiday sales figures well below expectations and losing nearly 30 percent of value.

The Dow ended down 0.4 percent to close at 16,417.01. The S&P had a more respectable day, down only about 0.1 percent to finish at 1,845.89, and the NASDAQ was nearly flat, closing at 4,218.69.

U.S. markets are trending higher this morning. The Dow is up about 29 points while the S&P is up about three. The NASDAQ is up 13 points in early trading.

Top Stories

The Target TGT data breach appears to be part of a larger crime that might have went on for more than half of 2013. Neiman Marcus is under fire this morning after saying that it didn’t know that its customer data was stolen until six months later.

IBM IBM said that it will invest more than $1.2 billion to build 15 new data centers as it expands its cloud services.

Asian Markets

Action in the U.S. markets subdued investor sentiment on Friday but Japan managed to finish close to the flat line in spite of other markets having a mostly down day. The Nikkei closed at 15,734.46—down 12 points.

The Shanghai composite closed down nearly one percent at 2,004.95 and the Hang Seng, up about 0.6 percent to close at 22,133.35.

European Markets

Europe is higher this morning after better than expected UK retail sales lit a fire under investors. The FTSE is up about 0.3 percent and the DAX is up 0.7 percent. The CAC is up about 0.5 percent.

Commodities

Commodities are mixed in the early Friday trading session. WTI is up about 0.5 percent at $94.44 while Brent is up at $106.06. Natural Gas is down about one percent to $4.33.

Gold is flat at $1,241 and silver is up 0.1 percent at $20.08. Copper is down 0.2 percent to $3.33

Currencies

The euro lost some ground against the dollar in early trading on worries of deflation. In this morning’s trading session, it’s down about 0.1 percent to 1.3603.

The pound is 0.5 percent higher against the U.S. currency at 1.6435. The dollar is flat against the yen at 104.34.

Pre-Market Movers

Intel INTC is down 4.3 percent and Capital One COF is down 1.2 percent this morning after disappointing earnings.

Earnings

Goldman Sachs GSreported fourth quarter results yesterday. The company reported EPS of $4.60, beating the consensus estimate of $4.17. Revenue of $8.78 billion beat the consensus estimate of $7.62 billion.

Citigroup C The company reported EPS of $0.82, lower than the consensus estimate of $0.99. Revenue of $17.9 billion was than consensus of $18.75 billion.

Companies reporting today include:

General Electric GE is expected to report EPS of $0.53 on revenue of $40.22 billion.

Morgan Stanley MS is expected to report EPS of $0.46 on revenue $8.03 billion.

Economics

At 8:30 a.m. ET Housing Starts will be released and Industrial Production comes out at 9:15. Consumer Sentiment reaches the market at 9:55.