Stocks edged up on Mondayas investors awaited a slew of earnings results from the Big Tech companies, as well as a myriad of other corporations across industries this week.
The Dow opened higher, building on last week's gains after the 30-stock index set anall-time closing high on Friday. The S&P 500 also headed toward a higher open after reaching a record intraday high last week. Nasdaq futures also advanced.
U.S. West Texas intermediate crude oil prices jumped to close in on $85 per barrel Monday morning, reaching its highest level since 2014. The move tracked gains in Brent crude, the international benchmark, which jumped above $86 per barrel for its highest level since 2018 afterSaudi Arabia's energy minister suggested in a Bloomberg interviewthat oil producers exercise caution in boosting output despite fast-rising prices.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield hovered around 1.64%, or near its highest level since May, as inflation concerns remained front and center for investors amid rising energy and commodity prices and other price gains across the recovering economy. Last week,Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell saidthe elevated inflationary pressures spurred by supply chain constraints were "likely to last longer than previously expected, likely well into next year."
A number of individual companies have also flagged the impacts of rising costs in their earnings reports over the past couple weeks. Kevin Boone, executive vice president of sales and marketing for freight railroad company CSX Transportation (CSX), said during the company's earnings call last week that cost inflation has jumped over the last year, and "expectations have risen and are rising in the next year." And likewise, Whirlpool (WHRL) CEO Marc Bitzer said on the appliance company's earnings call he did not "expect that the inflation will quickly fall off" heading into next year.
This week's earnings results willcenter on those from the Big Tech companiesincluding Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOGL). These comprise some of the most heavily weighted components of the S&P 500. Most have underperformed the market this year after significant rallies in 2020 at the height of stay-in-place orders and demand for technology to stay connected.
Investors are hoping to see these companies echo the performance of some other earlier reporters and post estimates-topping results despite ongoing supply-side challenges. For the technology companies, these concerns will likely center on the impact of global chip shortages, as well as the impact of rising labor costs given their substantial workforces.
"We continue to strongly believe despite the lingering black cloud chip shortage that 3Q tech earnings will be standouts this week thus helping drive the sector higher into year-end as the Street continues to underestimate the fundamentals of this multi-trillion digital transformation playing out among consumer and enterprise tech names," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note on Sunday.
Still, this week overall will be a busy one for earnings season, with a total of about 165 companies in the S&P 500 posting results, according to data from Deutsche Bank.
As of Friday, about 23% of S&P 500 companies had reported actual results for the third quarter, and of these, 84% topped Wall Street's expectations for earnings per share (EPS),according to data from FactSet. The estimated earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 was 32.7%, based on actual results and expectations for companies still yet to report as of last week. If maintained through the end of third-quarter earnings season, that would mark the third-highest earnings growth rate posted for the index since 2010.
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