Wall Street edged higher this morning ahead of important earnings reports and a possible final Federal Reserve interest rate hike later this week, the Associated Press reports. The futures market for the S&P 500 advanced nearly 0.2% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.1%.
On Friday, stocks on Wall Street found some stability after sliding the day before. The earnings reporting season has been gaining momentum, with most companies reporting better results than expected.
This week, three of the “Magnificent Seven” companies behind the majority of the S&P 500’s gains this year — Alphabet, Facebook parent company Meta Platforms, and Microsoft — will report their earnings. Expectations are high after they all soared more than 35% so far this year.
The top stocks have become so big and their movements so influential over the market that Nasdaq was rebalancing its Nasdaq 100 index before trading began today to lessen the impact some stocks have on the overall index.
The seven stocks, which also include Amazon, Apple, and Nvidia, are collectively trading with stock prices that are 44 times higher than their earnings per share over the last 12 months.
In other trading today, U.S. benchmark crude oil gave up 4 cents to $77.03 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude, the pricing basis for international trading, declined 1 cent to $81.06 per barrel.
The dollar fell to 141.32 Japanese yen from 141.68 yen.
