The Trump Trade Returns: Version 2.x

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, Jan. 21.

State of Play

As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0655, things are pretty quiet, perhaps uncomfortably so:

• Stock index futures are pointing to modest gains, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 up 0.4% each. That’s well off the highs from earlier in the overnight session;

• Commodities are dropping. WTI crude oil is down 2.5% to trade close to $75/barrel. Copper is down 2%;

• Cryptos are also down, with Bitcoin off 4% to trade around $103,500;

• Bonds are unchanged. The 10-year yields 4.59%, which is well below the 4.8% level it found itself last week.

Today’s Known Events

It is officially earnings season. We had the big banks report last week. Now things get serious with big consumers:

• 3M (MMM 0.00%↑), a solid gauge of consumer staples, just came out with earnings that beat analyst estimates and that stock is moving higher in the pre-market;

• D.R. Horton (DHI 0.00%↑), a good indicator of US real estate, also beat estimates and it too is moving higher this morning;

• Netflix (NFLX 0.00%↑) is perhaps the highlight of the day, reporting after the close at 1600;

• United Airlines (UAL 0.00%↑) also reports after the close.

Other consumer staples report later in the week, especially Procter & Gamble (PG 0.00%↑), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ 0.00%↑), Verizon (VZ 0.00%↑) and others.

Of course we’ll also be watching the new old president for policy initiatives that will impact markets…

(‘Return of the Trump Trade’, by author via OpenArt.ai)