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Is a budding pandemic any match for tech earnings week? We’ll find out later today when Apple and eBay report results, kicking off one of the most anticipated stretches of the earnings season.
The timing couldn’t be any better. The global markets took a beating on Monday with the S&P 500 down 1.6%, its worst one-day drop since October, as coronavirus fears and its impact on global economies triggered a big sell-off.
But today is a new day. U.S. futures are up (though slipping), as I write, as are stocks in much of Europe. A reminder: Chinese markets are in Lunar New Year holiday mode for the rest of the week.
Today’s rebound is no doubt being fueled by a bit of bargain-hunting by traders, but there’s also a bit of relief that fresh corporate earnings news will shift some of the focus from disease and death tolls to profits and forecasts.
So what should we be looking for in the first batch of tech earnings? It’s a bit of a mixed picture. As the table below shows, shares in online shopping giants Ebay and Amazon are down for the year while Alphabet and Apple have come out of the gates in 2020 surging.
Cloud, iPhones, mobile services take focus off coronavirus (for now)
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Tech is a big bellwether for the state of the economy. Strong iPhone results and Apple’s growing services business will tell us something about the health of the consumer in 2020. Meanwhile, analysts will be poring over cloud revenues from the likes of Microsoft and Alphabet to get perspective on corporate spending trends.
But don’t get too complacent. The Fed kicks off two days of meetings today as well, and coronavirus will be on the agenda. Already some forecasters are predicting the impact of the outbreak could cause economists to re-evaluate their 2020 growth forecasts. And that could alter the Fed’s calculations on interest rates, bringing forward the likeliness of a cut by year-end.
Stay tuned.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
Today's reads
Not so fast. In the world of high-frequency trading, every millisecond counts. And for those of us on the sidelines, there's a cost, too. A new study says the lightning-fast boys earn close to $5 billion from the highly controversial trading practice while the rest of us pay a minuscule penalty for their gains. Cue more debate from the campaign trail on the need to impose a trading tax.
Sky's the limit. Airbus shares took off on Tuesday after the aerospace giant announced it had settled a long-running bribery probe. The terms of the deal were pegged at roughly $3 billion. More importantly, it allows the company to put the scandal behind it as it looks to capitalize on Boeing's woes and gain market share.
Denialgram. Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam joined Instagram last week, just in time for the start of WEF meet-ups in Davos. On Sunday, he took to the platform to defend himself against fresh allegations in the local press that he was directly involved in a spying scandal against a star banker that rocked the bank last year. In case you're wondering: the post collected 542 likes.
Market candy
Quarterly Investment Guide. I am thrilled to tell you about a new feature Fortune is bringing readers in 2020. In our first-ever Quarterly Investment Guide, we asked our finance writers to investigate the big investment trends of the year. The package is full of insights, tips and advice. In this quarter, we've focused on whether the bull market has room to run, what warning signs are flashing in the economy, which stocks to consider, and even where to buy a second home or real estate investment. I'll break out a few of the ideas in the days to come, but you can get jump on it all on the site.
