Wall Street week ahead: Investors’ focus on home sales, Fed minutes, consumer sentiment

In a holiday-shortened week ahead, Wall Street investors will be focusing on home sales data and the Federal Reserve minutes of January monetary policy meeting. The markets will remain closed on Monday to mark Presidents’ Day.

The week will also see other economic data including preliminary PMIs by S&P Global for services and manufacturing, and consumer sentiment for February.

In earnings calendar, Walmart, Alibaba Group, Medtronic, Occidental Petroleum, and Analog Devices will be the major companies to report their quarter results.

Economic calendar

February 17 (Monday) is a President’s Day holiday.

On February 18 (Tuesday), a report on Empire State manufacturing survey for February will be released.

On February 19 (Wednesday), minutes of Fed’s January FOMC meeting will be released.

On February 20 (Thursday), separate reports on initial jobless claims for the week ended February 15, Philadelphia Fed manufacturing survey for February, and US leading economic indicators for January will be released.

On February 21 (Friday), separate reports on S&P flash US services PMI and S&P flash manufacturing PMI for February, final consumer sentiment for February, existing home sales for January will be released.

Earnings

Following companies are due to report fourth quarter earnings in the week ahead — Walmart, Alibaba Group Holding, Medtronic, Occidental Petroleum, Analog Devices, Booking Holdings, Arista Networks, Mercadolibre, Constellation Energy Corporation, Southern Company (The), Cadence Design Systems, Netease, Nu Holdings, Carvana Co, Copart, Newmont Corporation, Block, Cheniere Energy, Targa Resources, Quanta Services, Garmin, Crown Castle, Vulcan Materials Company, Live Nation Entertainment,Entergy Corporation, Baidu, Consolidated Edison, Vici Properties, EQT Corporation, Texas Pacific Land Corporation, Costar Group, Cheniere Energy Partners, Ansys, Rocket Companies, and Rocket Companies.

Markets last week

US stocks finished mixed on Friday following lackluster retail sales data.

The broad-based S&P 500 ended unchanged at 6,114.63, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.4 per cent to 44,546.08. The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.4 per cent to 20,026.77.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.47% from 4.54% late Thursday.