Earnings Season Gets Real

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Thursday, April 17. Today’s Stocks On The Contrarian Radar©️ segment features inverse ETFs and is at the bottom of this page.

State of Play

Stocks got pummeled yesterday, with the selling accelerating after Fed Chair Jerome Powell failed to supply any hope of an immediate interest rate cut. Overnight Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM 0.00%↑) reported positive results in its first-quarter earnings and that stock is rallying in the pre-market, up 3% at the time of this writing.

That has led to a rebound in the tech sector in overnight trading. As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0645, that is very much the story as a mixed bag awaits:

• Stock index futures are pointing to gains, but off of the highs. The Nasdaq is leading things, up 0.8%. S&P 500 futures are up 0.4%. Dow Industrials are an outlier, down 1% due to earnings from one of its components, UnitedHealth (UNH 0.00%↑), which just reported earnings that appear to have been horrific;

• Commodities are mixed, with copper down 2% (never a good sign) while WTI crude oil is up 0.9% to trade around $63/barrel. Precious metals are taking a breather, with silver down 2%. Gold is down a lot less, just 0.3%;

• Cryptos are unchanged through all this. Bitcoin is unmoved from 24 hours ago, trading around $84,200;

• Bonds aren’t doing anything either. The 10-year yields 4.30%.

Today’s Known Events

Earnings season gets real today. We had TSMC already. Others are coming in fast and furious:

• UnitedHealth (UNH 0.00%↑) missed estimates and lowered guidance and that stock is getting beaten to a pulp in the pre-market, down 20%!

• American Express (AXP 0.00%↑) is due at the top of the hour;

• Other financials are due before the open, including Blackstone (BX 0.00%↑), Charles Schwab (SCHW 0.00%↑) and Ally Financial (ALLY 0.00%↑);

• Infosys (INFY 0.00%↑) and Snap-On (SNA 0.00%↑) also report before the open at 0930;

• Netflix (NFLX 0.00%↑) is the biggest name to report after the close at 1600.