Friends
Starting tomorrow we will get a string of earnings reports that should set the tone for stocks over the remainder of the week. We got a somewhat disappointing report from Halliburton this morning, and will get Texas Instruments after the close today. Tomorrow, we will get earnings from McDonalds, DuPont, J&J, Kimberly-Clark, Verizon, and Apple among others. Later in the week we get reports from the likes of Abbot Labs, Boeing, ConocoPhillips, 3M, AT&T, Caterpillar, Bristol-Myers, P&G, Chevron, Ford, Honeywell and Starbucks. We’ll have a good handle on earnings season by Friday, that’s for sure.
As for the markets, stocks were quiet and mixed today with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing the day down 11 points to close at 12,708. The S&P 500 was up fractionally to close right at 1316. Gold was up about $14 to trade near $1678 and oil was up $1.48 to close near $99.81. All in all, it has been the best beginning to a year since the late 90’s. It has been so quiet, it has tended to put us to sleep, but as we saw last year, that could change at any time. Let’s see how the earnings play out this week.
Have a nice evening everyone.
