Earnings, DeepSeek Day 2

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, Jan. 28. DeepSeek Day 2.

State of Play

Stocks got beaten up yesterday. Actually it was only one part of the market, namely semiconductors reacting to the DeepSeek ‘Sputnik shock.’ As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0640, things are pretty quiet:

• Stock index futures aren’t doing much but there are potentially some signs of life from tech, with the Nasdaq up 0.6%. S&P 500 futures are up 0.3%;

• Cryptos are definitely showing signs of life, with Bitcoin up 4% to trade close to $103,000;

• Commodities also gaining a bit of ground, with WTI crude oil up 0.8% to trade around $73.50/barrel. Copper is up 0.9%, encouragingly;

• Bonds are retreating a tiny bit after yesterday’s rally. The 10-year yield is up 4 basis points to 4.57% (yields move inversely to prices).

Today’s Known Events

A pretty big day of earnings awaits:

• General Motors (GM 0.00%↑) just beat estimates and appears to have raised guidance. That stock is rising in the pre-market, by almost 3% at the time of this writing;

• Royal Caribbean (RCL 0.00%↑) also beat both top- and bottom-line forecasts and it too is up in the pre-market;

• Consumer staples company Kimberly-Clark (KMB 0.00%↑) earnings were mixed however and that stock is down a bit in the pre-market. Staples stocks had a great day yesterday by the way.

• Boeing (BA 0.00%↑), Lockheed Martin (LMT 0.00%↑), and RTX (RTX 0.00%↑), three aerospace manufacturers, are due a little later this morning;

• JetBlue (JBLU 0.00%↑), a good gauge of consumer travel in the US, also reports before the open at 0930.

After the close we’ll hear from Starbucks (SBUX 0.00%↑) and others.

We also get Case-Shiller home prices at 0900. The 20-city index is expected to increase by 4.2% year-over-year for November (Case-Shiller is unfortunately a bit dated).

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence reading is out at 1000. Economists who were surveyed expect a reading of 105.9, an improvement over last month’s reading of 104.7.