Further tepid economic data yesterday underlined the case for the Federal Reserve to maintain its cautious tone over interest rates, helping provide some broad-based support for Wall Street.
The earnings highlight however, in the shape of Google’s parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), wasn’t quite as impressive with the market spooked by aggressive spending at the tech giant. Whilst revenues beat expectations, spiralling costs were a cause for concern, leaving the stock to sink more than 3% in after hours trade.
There’s another busy day ahead for earnings although the stand out is likely to be Snapchat’s parent Snap (NYSE:SNAP), posting numbers after the market close. Shares are off recent lows but at under $7 remain well below the $17 IPO price of almost two years ago.
Economic data will focus on the composite PMI reading which is due shortly after the market open, although with mindsets now being so entrenched that the Fed will play a waiting game from here, it’s unlikely that even a reasonable overshoot of expectations would put that much downside pressure on stocks in anything beyond the very short term.
Ahead of the open we’re calling the Dow up 46 at 25285 and the S&P 500 unchanged at 2725.