Dysfunction in Europe is leading to a lower open for US markets on Monday after anti-austerity party Syriza won the Greek elections potentially catalysing further political upset across the continent and more blowback to US corporate foreign earnings
Going forward, the focus will be on the latest Fed meeting on Wednesday in which the FOMC are expected to completely remove the reference to a “considerable time” for the timing of the next rate-hike with “patience” left in.
Since the first hints at tapering The Fed has indicated that policy will be data-dependant and seem likely to imply in this latest meeting that if the inflation drop is transitory and current trends in employment remain; then a rate-hike around June 2015 is still on the table. There has been a general shift to easing monetary policy at other global central banks since falling oil prices have lowered the inflation outlook, the onus remains on the Fed to hold the line on tightening.
This week marks a big one for the top and bottom performers in US equity indices as top tech and oil companies report earnings. Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are expected to announce quarterly profit growth this week while Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) are all projected to see profits decline in the quarter. Oil giant Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) finishes the week with what should be a huge drop in revenues thanks to the drop in oil prices, the stock performance will depend on how big.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), DR Horton Inc (NYSE:DHI) and Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN) are to report earnings on Monday.
Futures suggest the:
S&P 500 will open 7 points lower at 2,044 with the
Dow 30 expected to open 82 points lower at 17,590 and the
NASDAQ Composite 10 points lower at 4,267.
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