If there was ever a morning to illustrate the outsized impact one stock can have on the Dow Jones Industrial Average , this is it.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell appeared on 60 Minutes last night and repeated what’s becoming kind of a Fed mantra about being patient and watching the data. Not surprisingly, he didn’t specifically discuss interest rates in the interview, but did repeat what he said recently to Congress about seeing signs of slowing global growth.
Friday’s focus was on the February U.S. jobs report , which at 20,000 new positions came in way under Wall Street’s expectations for gains of around 180,000. It’s never a good idea to look at one report in isolation, and the same goes for this one. Three-month average jobs gains are right around 186,000, which is pretty good, but the volatility of the numbers is keeping investors on their toes.
Remember, until negotiations conclude, U.S. companies really don’t have a roadmap for trade, and that appears to be affecting many of their capital expenditure plans. It’s getting close to Q1 earnings season and many analysts expect year-over-year losses for S&P 500 earnings. If there’s no resolution on trade heading into the next round of earnings, that means investors might not be able to glean much information from CEOs and other executives of future spending plans.
Earnings this coming week are a little sparse, but computer tech company Oracle is expected to report after the close Thursday, perhaps offering investors a fresh look at the cloud space. Look for a preview of ORCL’s earnings on Ticker Tape later this week.