SP 500 Earnings: Big Week Ahead: Econ Data, and MegaCap Earnings Reports Will Keep Everyone Busy

Attached is Briefing.com’s listing of all the economic data scheduled for next week, starting with Tuesday morning, October 29th ’24.

The big reports will be all the labor market data, including JOLTS on Tuesday am, ADP on Wednesday am, jobless claims on Thursday am, and the October nonfarm payroll report on Friday, morning, November 1.

In addition, investors get the first look at Q3 ’24 GDP data (the NowCast estimates I’ve seen are still slightly above 3% GDP growth for Q3 ’24), as well as the all-important PCE deflator and many of the mega-cap tech names that top the SP 500.

September PCE and PCE Core are expected at +0.2%. With bond yields moving up and expectation for stronger labor data, the last thing the Treasury market will want to see is an unexpectedly warm PCE report.

What a week – there’s going to be a lot of data.

Key megacap earnings reports this week: 

  • Tuesday: 10/29: Alphabet (GOOGL), AMC
  • Wednesday, 10/30: Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), AMC
  • Thursday: 10/31: Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), AMC

AMC: after market close

Obviously, there are other companies reporting, like Visa, Starbucks, Merck, AMD and Intel, etc. but for this blog, the asset class that is large or mega-cap growth is the greatest area of interest (right now).

Clients value holdings are mainly financial stocks and out of favor, or busted growth names like Nike (NKE).

SP 500 earnings data:

  • The forward 4-quarter estimate fell to $265.03 from last weeks $265.72;
  • The PE on the forward estimate is 21.9x versus last weeks 22x and the quarter’s start at 21.5x;
  • The SP 500 earnings yield (EY) rose this week to 4.56% from last week’s 4.53% and the start of the quarter’s 4.64%. ( I still think the EY a little too low and would prefer it over 5%.)

It’s interesting that 2024 EPS growth for the SP 500 has weakened a little to 9% after the June – July ’24 peak in the mega-cap tech stocks.

Expected calendar year EPS growth rates by sector:

Click on the above table and note the change in the 2024 sector EPS growth rates since June 30 ’24.

Financials have seen a 50% pop in the sector’s expected full-year 2024 growth rate since June 30.

The big drags have been energy and basic materials.

Technology has been relatively flat since June 30 ’24. Even 2025 full-year expected EPS growth has been flat but still healthy indicates healthy y-o-y growth.

Healthcare has been cut in half for ’24, while industrials – probably impacted by Boeing – have seen declines.

Nothing specific here – just note the trends.

Summary / conclusion:

The rest of the weekend will be spent writing about tech earnings by individual companies this coming week.

The numbers above don’t indicate any issue yet, particularly when looking at expected growth rates for “info tech” on the above spreadsheet.

Look at Netflix, Tesla and Oracle earnings: all saw low expectations, poor sentiment, and – particularly Netflix and Tesla – shot the lights out in terms of stock performance following earnings.

It feels like mega-cap tech has the same sentiment set-up and low expectations coming into this coming week’s earnings.

This is not advice or a recommendation, but only an opinion. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing can and does involve the loss of principal, even for short periods of time. All data above is sourced from LSEG.

Thanks for reading.

 

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