Yahoo Finance Stocks edge higher as investors eye earnings, Fed meeting
Yahoo Finance Live anchors break down how the markets opened on Tuesday, Jan. 31.
Video transcript
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- Watching a lot of big themes, and I guess one of our takeaways from our conversation with Steve [INAUDIBLE] at the top of the show is, overall, things are shaking out better than estimated by and large. Or maybe just expectations were so bad going into this earnings season that companies couldn't help coming out and beating the worst case scenarios out there. But that said, it's sort of a tepid victory.
- Yeah, it's very-- to Steve's point, there were very clear winners and losers this earnings season. Overall, this season has not been good, estimates tracking below estimates. We're seeing a lot of just earnings downgrades by Wall Street. But on the winners camp, you have a company like a ServiceNow; losers camp, a company like 3M.
- Well, and there's the beating on the numbers, and there's beating on the vibe because these companies, as we know, don't always trade on what you can see in black and white in the report. There are small things that investors focus on, or just general sentiment.
Yeah, there's also-- to that point, Julia, reading a lot of the earnings call transcripts, of course they hit after the earnings call. But there's also changes in what analysts are asking. A lot more questions on free cash flow, a lot more questions on operating expenses compared to the fourth quarter. And, of course, all those things important, Brad, when the economy is slowing down.
- Yeah, spot on. We're taking a look at some of the activity early on in today's session. We are higher on the Dow by about 2/10 of a percent, net lower over the past two days, though, by about 7/10 of a percent. We'll see if we can get into positive territory and add on to some of the gains that we're seeing out of the gate here today.
And the NASDAQ composite, you're seeing that up by about 3/10 of a percent for the tech heavy average, net lowered though by about 1.7% over the past two days. Big down day yesterday we saw, and then additionally S&P 500, you're seeing that higher out of the gate by about 2/10 of a percent, Again, still net lower by about 1.1% over the past two days here.
Let's also take a look at some of the sector activity out of the gate. Let's move this board over. There we go. 11 S&P 500 sectors for you folks. We've got them dialed up here on the screen. Discretionary is actually leading the charge right now. It's up by about half a percent here out of the gate this morning. And then additionally, you've got about 10 out of 11 S&P 500 sectors in positive territory. Surprise, surprise, energy pulling up the caboose there, now lower by about half a percent.
And then also want to take a look at some of the Dow components here on the day as you had some fresh earnings come through that we're about to break down for you here in just a little bit. But there you're seeing one of the moves in teeing up our conversation, Caterpillar down by 3.4% right [? now, Julia. ?]
