With earnings season ready to kick into high gear this week, Wall Street ticked lower early today, the Associated Press reports.
Futures for the S&P 500 inched down 0.2%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3%.
Wall Street’s expectations are low yet again heading into earnings season. Analysts are forecasting the worst drop in earnings per share for S&P 500 companies since the spring of 2020. That would mark a third straight quarter where profits sank.
Coming up this week are results from Bank of America, Netflix, Tesla, and airlines United and American. A retail sales report from the government on Tuesday could factor into the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate policy decision later this month.
In a blow to global food security, Russia halted a breakthrough wartime deal today that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia where hunger is a growing threat. Wheat prices jumped 3% on the announcement, though analysts don’t expect more than a temporary bump to food commodity prices because places like Russia and Brazil have ratcheted up wheat and corn exports.
In other trading Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 99 cents to $74.43 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It lost $1.47 to $75.42 a barrel on Friday.
Brent crude, the pricing basis for international trading, declined $1 to $78.87 a barrel.
The dollar slipped to 138.29 Japanese yen from 138.82 yen. It has weakened recently amid speculation that the Bank of Japan might alter its ultra-lax monetary policy soon. That may shrink the gap between higher returns in the U.S. and other markets where interest rates have been hiked sharply, and Japan, where the benchmark rate has been kept at minus 0.1% for a decade.
