Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets in the day ahead. Today is Tuesday, Aug. 1. Swiss National Day. Forgive the singing if you listen to the podcast.
State of Play
BP (BP 0.00%↑) earnings missed estimates, the latest oil major to do so. As of 0630 it looks like stocks are set to open lower:
Stock index futures are pointing to losses, with the S&P and Nasdaq down 0.3% each;
Commodities are moving a bit lower with WTI crude oil down 0.7% to trade around $81/barrel. Copper is down 0.6%;
Cryptos are down. Bitcoin is off 2% to drop below $29,000;
Bonds are unchanged. The 10-year yields 3.97%.
Known Events
It’s a massive day of earnings. We’re due to hear from Caterpillar (CAT 0.00%↑) intermittently. Also out before the open are Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCLH 0.00%↑), Uber (UBER 0.00%↑), JetBlue (JBLU 0.00%↑), and Pfizer (PFE 0.00%↑) among others.
After the close at 1600 we’ll hear from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 0.00%↑), Starbucks (SBUX 0.00%↑), Pinterest (PINS 0.00%↑), Camping World Holdings (CWH 0.00%↑), and Virgin Galactic (SPCE 0.00%↑), among others.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, is out at 1000. Economists expect the headline number of job openings to clock in at 9.6 million, down a bit from the 9.8 million seen last month. The closely-watched quits levels, which tracks the number of people who willingly quit their jobs during the month, increased to 4 million at the last reading, the first time in five months it’s been at that level:
This is a positive sign for the labor market in the US and kind of begs the question how inflation is able to subside as much as it has with so many people still gainfully employed. Will leave that one to the economists to answer.
The Bottom Line©️
Earnings should be the driver again today seeing how nobody seems to care about economic data or the Fed anymore. It’s like investors have decided there’s going to be a soft landing without inflationary pressure and that will be that. Bulls do seem to be buoyant these days. Meme stocks are even having their days in the sun again. All The Contrarian can do is sit back and watch the madness, happy to see his portfolio holdings bid up (including many he had left for dead) but secure in the knowledge that the good times will eventually end and that the hangover will surely be very painful indeed.
Housekeeping
Obviously this is not investment advice (duh). Do your own research, make your own decisions.
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Earnings, JOLTS