Earnings season for 2018-Q3 is off to a positive start, and with the S&P 500 now just 2% away from setting new records, investors have shifted a portion of their forward-looking attention away from 2019-Q1 to focus on the current quarter.
At least, that's one interpretation that explains what we're seeing in the alternative futures spaghetti forecast chart for the S&P 500.
Assuming that it is 2018-Q3 that they're focusing upon, it looks like investors are placing about 25% of their attention on 2018-Q3 and about 75% on the more distant future quarter of 2019-Q1 in setting today's stock prices.
The main question for the market going forward is to what extent might the ongoing tit-for-tat tariff wars negatively affect the business outlooks of traditional S&P 500 firms and to what extent might the updated outlooks of the index' biggest tech firms offset that impact.
So the upcoming fourth week of July 2018 could be a week with a lot of market-moving news. Unlike last week, which was pretty uneventful where moving the market was concerned....
- Monday, 16 July 2018
- Tuesday, 17 July 2018
- Wednesday, 18 July 2018
- Thursday, 19 July 2018
- Friday, 20 July 2018
For more background, Barry Ritholtz has summarized the top six positives and negatives for markets and economics news in Week 3 of July 2018.