By Daniel Shvartsman
Investing.com – Whatever the volatile start to trading in 2022 can tell us about the state of the market, one old stand-by has held true – the mega-cap tech stocks, represented by FAANG or FAAMNG or whatever other acronym, lead the overall market for higher or for lower.
Netflix’s disappointing earnings came during the worst of market selling. Microsoft’s impressive earnings report the next week more or less coincided with the correction’s bottom (at least so far); Apple’s helped push the market back in the positive direction.
And this week, the market has seemed to follow the tone of each market giant that has reported – Alphabet’s sterling Q4 pushed markets higher on Wednesday, before Meta Platforms’ dour guidance dragged the Nasdaq down 3%.
All of which is a long way of saying that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) was the latest on the bump with their post-earnings report today. The report met revenue expectations and had an EPS beat fueled by the company’s Rivian stake, but even with muted guidance the stock is soaring after-hours at this writing. A sign of where the market goes tomorrow?
Here are three things to watch in markets tomorrow beyond the Amazon reaction:
1. Nonfarm Payrolls
Expectations for nonfarm payrolls have ratcheted down after the weak ADP jobs report – with 301K jobs lost in January – and murmurings from the Biden administration warning that this may be a disappointing report. Jobless claims actually came in below expectations today, which may be a tea leaf in favor of that interpretation: jobs numbers will be poor and weird due to temporary time off from Omicron related illness, as the milder COVID-19 variant still wrought havoc on work schedules and health of people around the country and world.
The mean expectation from analysts is for the report to show 150K new jobs. lGoldman Sachs wrote in a note that they expect a drop of 250K jobs due to omicron related absenteeism. As ever, what the market is pricing in at this stage remains to be seen.
2. Pharma Earnings
While big tech names have cleared the decks in a raucous start to earnings season, there is a good batch of pre-market earnings to close out the week. Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) is expected to show 9% revenue growth and 23% reported earnings per share growth; Sanofi (PA:SASY) (NASDAQ:SNY) is slated for a more muted 4% EPS and revenue growth; and Regeneron (NASDAQ:REGN) is expected to post revenue growth of 86% and EPS growth of 110%.
3. lRoyal Caribbean Earnings
Amid a week that may show both Omicron headwinds on the job side and end of the pandemic – at least as a market factor – on the Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) side, Royal Caribbean’s earnings should make for an interesting read-through to the travel sector and projected recovery.
Royal Caribbean (NYSE:RCL) is expected to boast $1.03B in revenue, many times above last year’s still in the pandemic number, but that is still barely 40% of the two years ago quarter. So the cruise line’s outlook will be telling for whether its peers and the travel and services sectors at large are ready to set sail again.