US markets set to open higher on Thursday as markets look past the ECB’s action to revoke a waiver that allowed banks to use Greek government debt as collateral for loans. The ECB’s decision wasn’t expected so the shock value sent global shares lower on Wednesday but as long as Greeks still have access to the Emergency Liquidity Assistance program, there should be no major cause for concern.
European matters aside, US markets were actually quite strong in the face of falling Oil prices in the last trading session in a sign of endurance that hasn’t been present in the past couple of months. Fourth quarter earnings reports alongside planned capex cuts from the oil majors have gone some way to soothe concerns about the impact of the oil price drop on the profitability of energy companies.
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) shares surged as much as 6% on Tuesday, just two days ahead of its official fourth quarter earnings release after the social media giant announced it will sell ads outside of its platform to third party vendors.
Slowing user growth and a lack of profitability have been amongst the biggest concerns for shareholders who have been exiting the stock since its peak in December 2013. The move to put ‘promoted tweets’ on third-party sites and apps could address both concerns by providing an additional income source as well as reaching out to new users on other platforms.
Having made steady progress at decreasing the size of quarterly losses, Twitter is expected to make a pre-tax profit of $45.27m in the fourth quarter of 2014.
If Twitter can report evidence of acceleration in daily and monthly active user growth on top of pre-tax profits and the just-announced rejuvenated plans for monetisation; shares could have a lot of upside potential.
LinkedIn, Expedia, News Corp, Sprint, Pandora and Michael Kors also release earnings on Thursday.
Futures suggest the:
S&P 500 will open 3 points higher at 2,044 with the
Dow expected to open 46 points higher at 17,719 and the
NASDAQ 4 points higher at 4,225.
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