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After a muted session yesterday led the Nasdaq and Dow Jones to incremental 0.3% and 0.2% gains and the S&P to a similarly fractional loss of 0.1%, futures are currently indicating the 3 major benchmark indices will open roughly flat on yesterday’s close. The S&P and Dow Jones are showing opening levels 0.08% and 0.06% down on yesterday. Nasdaq 100 futures are also showing a likely open somewhere around 0.1% down to flat. European indices are mainly down today falling in early trading after opening up. Today’s meeting of the ECB resulted in interest rates and the ongoing stimulus package of bond purchases left unchanged.
Yesterday’s main event, apart from Goldman Sachs posting forecast beating Q4 results and still dropping to a 0.62% loss for the day to mirror Morgan Stanley on Tuesday, was Fed boss Janet Yellen’s public address. She reconfirmed that the Federal Reserve plans to make 3 to 4 incremental interest rate rises and predicted that the trend is expected up until 2019, with rates reaching a ‘long term neutral’ level of 3%. Yellen also took a hawkish stance on the U.S. economy and its near-term prospects, painting a very positive picture.
However, it seems that market participants are looking for signals from the new Trump administration before making moves with trading holding within a narrow band all week. Today’s economic announcements include the week’s jobless claims data which will be released by the Labour Department at 08:30 ET, with data on Housing Starts for December scheduled for announcement at the same time. Analysts are forecasting modest growth on both sets of data compared to the previous periods.
Pre-open futures are showing that Netflix is set to open Thursday around 7% up after announcing the addition of 19-million new subscribers were added to its client base in 2016, its best year ever. On the other side of the scale energy infrastructure company Kinder Morgan is showing losses after it announced results this morning. Despite moving into profit during Q4 declines in revenue outstripped forecasts.
