Weighing The Week Ahead: It’s All About Earnings

thenews 2013.07.21 09:33

In last week's prediction for the week ahead my streak I guessed that the main theme would be whether we had dodged the bullet on the matter of a correction. This proved to be pretty accurate, despite news about China, the Bernanke testimony, and some big earnings numbers.

This week we have very little economic data and the Fed members are finally taking some time off from the speech circuit. It is one of the two biggest weeks of the earnings season, so I expect that earnings will be the key focus.

Here are some perspectives to consider.

The Storytellers -- who can be of either the bullish or the bearish persuasion. The bears have emphasized the big misses in technology stocks. The bulls can point to strong reports from banks and health care companies. Anecdotal evidence is the raw material of confirmation bias, so watch out!
The Data-driven – who analyze all of the results. The story so far is that companies continue to beat expectations on earnings while missing on revenues. This is turning into a multi-year story. As we always do during earnings season, we pay special attention to the updates from the Bespoke Investment Group.